If age is what it takes to be this passionate, how can I
unleash the 53 year old inside? Simply
put, “Beauty & Ruin” is a masterful, exciting and joyously cathartic journey
through pain and loss to an understanding and appreciation of life on the other
side from an artist who has spent over 30 years grappling with these very themes. For Bob Mould, “beauty” and “ruin” are flip
sides of the same coin, two conjoined states that can’t exist without the
other, and the album works its way from desolation and defeat to jubilance in
3-4 song chunks. A heady (and
potentially problematic) thematic arc for sure, and the conceit wouldn't matter
if the songs didn’t hold up – but sweet Jebus, do they! The fact that a full third of the material here
sounds like it could have been written during sessions for “Flip Your Wig” and
that they feel thrilling rather than desperate or pandering is a testament to
Mould’s skills as a songwriter. There is
a vigor to these performances that belies Mould’s age. Artists in their 50s are expected
to mellow and reflect on their mortality (Dylan’s excellent “Time Out of Mind”
being the template)…well, this Bob didn't get the memo! He thrashes his way through the songs here (abetted
greatly by longtime foils Jason Narducy on bass and Jon Wurster on drums) with
the same level of energy that he had in the latter days of Husker Du and throughout
his tenure in Sugar.
And that is truly one of Mould’s greatest gifts – he is able
to look to his past for reference points without ever becoming beholden to them
or making the songs sound like retreads of past glories. Opener “Low Season” swims in the same gray seas
as 1990’s “Black Sheets of Rain” and stunning centerpiece “The War” sounds like
an ace lost song from “File Under: Easy Listening”. A nice little trick is the one Mould pulls on
the album’s two final tunes. If this
were truly a “middle age” album, the thing would bow out gracefully with the
sweet reverie of “Let The Beauty Be”, one of the most truly lovely songs in
Mould’s canon. When the song fades,
however, the band kicks back in with the raging but upbeat “Fix It”, a fake-out
coda that ends the album on a triumphant note.
If 2012’s “Silver Age” found Mould coming to terms with his legacy, “Beauty
& Ruin” finds him embracing it…the whole, bloody, joyous, messy lot of it...and
creates what might stand as the best solo album of his career in the
process.
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