By Todd Lavoie
“Growing old, it’s hard to be the angry young man/ Turn away. Turn and walk away” – so observes the discernibly less-vexed Bob Mould on his recently released District Line (Anti-), and the line is as good as any in summing up the mood shift we’ve seen in the guitar-wielding singer-songwriter in recent years.
With his latest, Mould still continues to stare down a demon or two, but he appears rather content to do so. Dare I say it? Oh, why not – there are moments on the disc in which he even could be described as sounding downright upbeat. Bully for him, I say, and double-bully for crafting such an engagingly diverse collection of songs. See the new Mould for yourselves Wednesday, March 26 – that’s when he and his band take to the Great American Music Hall stage, folks. Me, I’m already agog over the possibilities of the set-list, considering the breadth of his quarter-century-plus career.
Since the guy brought up the subject and all, it’s worth a little pondering. Ah, the angry young man thing: we music obsessives tend to really tighten our focus on this supposed issue, don’t we? Holding our heroes to high standards is one thing, but denying them the same inevitability that we all will eventually meet – growing older – has always struck me as absurd. Worse yet, we often insist on freezing them in time, keeping them bottled and bathed in piss ‘n’ vinegar and then carping away if they fail to deliver the same blister and bluster of their early to mid-20s.