Search - Bob Mould :: Black Sheets of Rain

Confusion, despair, & a more direct harder rock

John L Murphy | Los Angeles | 06/22/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Until "The Last Night," track 7, this is a competent but not stellar album. The first six tracks churn along, with angst and anger as expected, but they sonically do not make much of a distinctive impression on me, compared to the Sugar "Copper Blue," the later Bob Mould solo LPs such as the underrated "The Last Dog & Pony Show," or Husker Du's "Warehouse." Merely placing "Black Sheets" in this esteemed category of great Bob Mould records, however, shows what a high level of craft he can achieve at his driven best. "Black Sheets," however, leaves behind the pretty good and enters the inspired as his voice hits the tender mix of longing colored by the tincture of regret in the well-constructed narrative of "The Last Night." This song is told from the perspective of a lover who knows that his encounter will be the final one of the relationship he plans to break off the next day. Here the CD is redeemed.



The next three songs kick in smartly. Mould loosens up and finds what listeners to "Workbook" or later Huskers will recognize: the combination of wistful nostalgia and fierce pain. Not easy to carry off, and this master shows how it's done fifteen years before emo rules the charts of whatever passes for alternative rock these days. The last song, "Sacrifice/ Let There Be Peace," returns to the more angry snarl of the earlier, first six tracks, but winds the album down smartly in its spiral guitar figure. The best of the more Richard Thompson like, guitar-based but more folksy & acoustic, debut solo record, "Workbook," and this second one, curiously, were issued by WB as a separate CD, "Poison Years.""