2 keepers
keeper avg .200
Mould's third solo album picks up directly after the final Sugar album, 1994's File Under Easy Listening (not including the compilation Besides). Indeed several songs, especially "Any Time Between" and the entire closing trio of songs, are completely indistinguishable in sound from his previous three albums. Perhaps due to the fact that Mould recorded the entire album himself, the bass guitar plays a more prominent role, as the relatively atmospheric "Any Time Between" is structured around a lone bass guitar line. I can see him wanting to branch out a little bit, and this approach does provide a welcome contrast to Mould's typical walls of stacked guitar chords. "Roll Over and Die", "Art Crisis", and the problematic "Hair Stew" are, like the album opener, decidedly bass-focused. The album's lofty apex "Fort Knox, King Solomon"***** sonically resembles "Hoover Dam" (from 1992's Copper Blue), except with dense layers of stirring, imploring melody in place of the former's chordal complexity. "Next Time That You Leave" and the acoustic/electric "Thumbtack" are on the mellower or at least slower side, fitting the songs' story of a break-up. Sometimes the best choice is to rock out, and Mould's super-saturated guitar harmonics push "Egøverride"**** far "into the red". On the subject of noisy guitars, while acting as his own producer Mould does make some unfortunate engineering / mixing choices (or perhaps pressures someone else to). First, he ruins the potentially stand-out track "I Hate Alternative Rock" with a distracting, badly-synchronized drum loop; but he squanders the amazing potential of "Hair Stew" even more egregiously, as he evokes an intriguing tension with minimal bass-only production until screeches of digital noise enter and make the rest of the song un-listenable. Maybe keep the guy with high-end hearing loss away from the mixing console.
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