Bob Mould: District Line : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

"Growing old, it's hard to be/ An angry young man," this ex-Hüsker Dü guitarist sings here, during a quiet bridge in the quite enraged "Return to Dust." It's even harder for older punks to take the routines and disappointments of middle age lying down. Another song, "Again and Again," is mostly acoustic guitars and keyboard rain, but Mould is as irate in this blow-by -blow account of an ugly breakup, down to the legal details ("I left the title to the house inside the piano bench/And my lawyer's got the will"), as he is stacking the electric guitars and sour-choir harmonies in "Stupid Now" and "Who Needs to Dream?" Mould's many albums over the past two decades, solo and with the power trio Sugar, have often been exercises in extremes: the opaque distortion coating 1990's Black Sheets of Rain, the pneumatic electronics on 2002's Modulate. But District Line is a focused, gripping zigzag between fury and woe, scorched rock and folk-pop distress, much like the Hüskers' best records — now with a longer view.