Everyone expected
Bob Mould
to have a strong and fascinating solo career after
Huesker Due
broke up at the end of 1987, and that's just what happened, though not in the ways most fans would have expected. After traveling through hardcore into fierce but emotionally rich indie rock during
's eight years, most observers expected a whole lot more of the same. Instead,
Mould
followed his muse into introspective semi-acoustic musings (1989's
Workbook
), venomous guitar-based commentary (1990's
Black Sheets of Rain
), pop-conscious indie rock (
Sugar
's 1992
Copper Blue
), solo efforts with
on all instruments (1996's
), detours into electronic music (2002's
Modulate
), and a return to guitar-based music that was initially wary (2005's
Body of Song
) but matured into ferocious confidence (2012's
Silver Age
and 2019's
Sunshine Rock
). To say
's post-
Hueskers
career has been exciting and unpredictable stretches the boundaries of understatement, and
has decided to document his journey with an exhaustive 24-disc box set,
Distortion: 1989-2019
.
Distortion
includes every album he released during that 30-year span and adds four discs of live recordings and two more of rare materials and collaborative tracks. If you're looking for an in-depth study of
's ever-satisfying blend of rage and melody,
quite literally gives you everything you could ask for, or at least so much that anything missing is ultimately trivial. Along with all his best-known albums, you get a few worthwhile lesser-known items (most notably 2006's
Blowoff
, an offshoot of his long-running DJ gig that blends rock and electronics with a lot more vigor than
) and some sublime live moments (his cover of
Richard Thompson
's "Shoot Out the Lights" from the
tour is pure catnip for fans of
's guitar style). However, the sheer size and scope of
makes it something of a paradoxical proposition for his audience: the superfans who would consider buying a 24-disc set will doubtless own a sizable majority of this music already, and it's hard to imagine many people looking to explore
's music for the first time would plunk down enough money to buy nearly everything at once.
is an anthology that's intensely obsessive in its concept and execution, but it also presents a lot of fine, inspiring music from a guitarist and songwriter who has never stopped being relevant since the late '80s and counting as an artist, and that's absolutely an accomplishment worth celebrating. ~ Mark Deming