Punk legend, alt-rock mainstay, "Daily Show" theme song composer: Bob Mould has got the icon thing covered. In April, the veteran musician is set to release his eighth solo studio album since the 1988 implosion of Hüsker Dü. (That tally doesn't even count Mould's other influential band, Sugar.) If the title, "Life and Times," suggests an artist in reflective mode, that's not too surprising: Mould is currently toiling on his memoirs, to be published by Little, Brown in 2010. For now, though, Mould is offering his most guitar-based set of songs in over a decade--completely setting aside the influence of his club DJ work that crept into recent rock efforts. For all that stylistic focus, though, the new album is hardly a monotone experience, since it features singer-songwriter acoustic pieces as well as steamroller punk anthems. Mould dropped by to play a solo version of his latest single, and talk to NEWSWEEK -- excerpts:
Talk a little bit about the song you just played: "I'm Sorry, Baby, But You Can't Stand In My Light Any More."
It's weird. I think it's the best song I've written in about 15 years, and I feel sorta bad, because it took 15 minutes to write. To me, the great songwriters like Jimmy Webb always turn a song [with a phrase] like "a Wichita Lineman is still on the line." All of a sudden, the whole character thing turns at that pivotal moment. Structurally, with my song, I'm laying out the story of, you know, people fall in love with people and they wanna try to fix 'em and it never works out. Before the song lands at the chorus, the revelation is made that it's not so much about fixing other people but, um "I'm the one who's sorta messed up here."
I was out playing the song in 2008 in a solo acoustic setting. I would always preface the song as being important to me, and I would say the title. And it's a long title, and people would laugh. And by the end of the song I would, invariably, always see one or two people crying.
That movement is always good!
Yeah, it's a juxtaposition, where people think it's a funny, cute title, and all of a sudden they're bawling. That's what you want. (Laughs.) That's what we do.
There are brief touches of electronics here and there on the new record, but clearly those elements are not foregrounded in the manner of the club beats that can be heard on your past few records.
Yeah, with this record, stylistically it reminded me a lot of the writing I did for "Workbook."
This rocks harder than that record, though.
Yeah, the middle section rocks harder. There's bigger guitars in there. Compositionally, the first three songs, though, are story driven. It's free verse poetry, with music improvised around it, as opposed to writing a guitar riff and fitting words in there.
You've had a love-hate relationship with the underground scene -- punk, indie, whatever you choose to call it. You even wrote a song called "I Hate Alternative Rock" in the 1990's.
I sure did. In the 80's, with Husker Du, we were making music and we didn't even know what it was called. We knew it was sort of punk rock, we knew it was sort of hardcore, then it morphed into this thing called alternative rock, due to MTV putting a name on it. In the 90's, with Sugar, that was hot on the heels of the success of Nirvana. It was a sound that I think I had a hand in defining, and I was there to get some benefits from that. Through the 90's we saw what happened, it got co-opted really quickly, and it became unbearable. And that's where that song comes from, on a 1996 album. After 20 years of making that kind of music, I wanted to explore other things. I was living in New York and really got into electronic music, the big room club culture of the late 90's and early 2000's.
But you've come back home, in a way, right?
I never went completely away from it. Sometimes for me, denying my past is the way to find my future. There's a balance between what's familiar and just emulating yourself. To just throw the whole deck of cards away is fun, sometimes. But I always drift back to what I know.
So how do you see your relationship to the underground these days? Music blogs were excited last week when some cell phone video surfaced of you playing with No Age. Where else do you see vitality?
You mention No Age, who are one of a handful of bands who I think are doing a great spin on that style of 80's music. They're named after an SST compilation, so they are clearly aware of what happened. I met them, they're really nice guys. That whole scene that's built around that club, The Smell, in LA, is very reminiscent of what was going on in the 80's all over the place. But in Ohio, there's bands like Times New Viking doing that same thing. It's happening everywhere. The difference is, in the era before cell phones and email, it was harder to connect. Spiritually, though, there's people who are capturing the essence of their performance. They don't hone the edges down so much. People call it lo-fi, or indie rock, whatever. It's just a different approach to documenting music. I'm pretty encouraged by things.
You've described your new song "Argos" as a track from from your imaginary gay hardcore band that managed to escape into the real world.
Yay!But you recorded this new record with only a drummer supporting your overdubs. Could you ever see yourself actually forming that gay hardcore band in the future? Or any band?
Maybe as a sideline thing. But it's pretty much just me and a drummer from here on out. I'm sort of in that phase in my life where it's about composition as much as anything. I put bands together to tour, though, and we visit the whole catalog.
Is it ever annoying to hear people request the old Hüsker Dü favorites, like "Makes No Sense At All"?
I play that stuff, they don't have to ask for it! I know what the good songs are. [Laughs.] Everything has gone full circle: from doing, to denying, to coming back and accepting it. I'm just grateful people took the ride with me.
