Feeling This: All Hail Lord God Bob Mould

Drew Magary
Drew Magary drops in for a guest edition of Feeling This.

Oh hello. Chris Gayomali is out this week out this week, dispatched to Prague by the IMF to recover a stolen list of covert operatives who have conspired to…well, I’ve said too much. Anyway, instead of Chris feeling cool things this week, you get me feeling some big suburban dad shit. ENJOY.

I first heard Sugar on MTV’s 120 Minutes. Why yes, I am old enough to have been alive when MTV showed actual music videos. Feels great to be ancient. Anyway, I rarely watched 120 Minutes, MTV's late night repository of indie music, because I was the kind of snot-nosed, dipshit teenager who thought that indie rock was too arty and that Metallica was music for REAL guys. The answer to everything. And then I heard “Your Favorite Thing” for the first time, a song that more than lives up to its title:

That video is quintessentially 90s, down to all the inexplicable rolling shots where the camera is turned sideways. But the song still holds up. I didn’t know what Sugar was at the time, and I had no idea that they were fronted by punk legend Bob Mould, one of the co-founders of Hüsker Dü. I heard THAT band for the first time years earlier, back in the 80s, when my jayvee football coach blasted it from his radio. I remember hearing “New Day Rising” and being like, This is fucking awesome. And then, of course, I failed to follow up by buying one of that band’s albums for myself. Why, I have no idea. I probably thought it was too indie or something. I was still actively listening to Poison at that age.

Anyway, I loved “Your Favorite Thing” but again failed to do my diligence and go spelunking down the Bob Mould/Sugar/Hüsker Dü rabbithole. It wasn’t until I transferred colleges and my new roommate Kevin played Sugar’s Copper Blue album on a loop when the light finally went on and I realized that I had discovered my favorite artist of all time. I spent my ensuing college years doing nothing but listening to Copper Blue and playing Super Mario 64. All while drunk. I regret nothing.

That was over 20 years ago. Bob Mould, performing in a new power trio these days that includes Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy, is still holding up as well as his back catalog is. Last month he released his 12th solo album and dubbed it Sunshine Rock, telling the press that he tried his best to write the album from a happy place, especially since he had written each of his last two albums after losing a parent (from 2014’s “The War”: “Everything we made, reduced to dust/You were the one who taught me most/I carry your remains/Your emblem and your name/Nothing left will ever be the same”). The song titles from this album let you know how badly Mould wants to keep his chin up: “Camp Sunshine,” Silly Love Song,” the title track, etc.

But Bob Mould is still Bob Mould, and the man cannot help but kick maximum ass at all times. He may be happy, but he’s still gonna beat the living fuck out of his poor guitar, as evidenced here. The man is not here to croon Barney songs at you. Whatever uplift he imbues in his work will always be girded by emotional darkness and raw power. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune summed up Mould’s sound best, here in the liner notes of Sugar’s Besides compilation:

Melodies are swallowed up in noise, tunefulness extracted from feedback, beauty torn from violence. The music seems to consume the band as they perform it, each precious note extracted a toll until all that is left is glassy-eyed exhaustion.

That’s still true in 2019. Bob Mould could have quit music ages ago and not had his legacy tarnished in the slightest. Instead, he’s as vital as he’s ever been, especially to old fanboys like me who want their favorite artists to continue cranking out gold but also want them to make sure it doesn’t get stale. You can count the number of artists who have fulfilled these unreasonable expectations on one hand, and Bob Mould is one of them. Now THAT is some shit to be sunny about. When a Bob Mould song explodes into rapacious melody after pummeling you into submission, it’s the best feeling in the world.

What We Ate This Week

All this time, I’ve been buying gochujang and spicy chili crisp off of Amazon, like a complete fucking dolt. Meanwhile, there’s an H Mart just a couple miles away from me that sells both those goodies, and more, at a fraction of the price. If you do not live near an H Mart, move near an H Mart. They have a noodle aisle, man. A whole fucking aisle of noodles. I fell to my knees. They should make the whole country out of an H Mart. I’m gonna put gochujang in my tea now.

What We Read This Week

My GMG colleague Anna Merlan has a book coming out next month about how truthering has taken hold over America—hence, Nikki Haley. I got an advanced copy of this book because I am just that special, and I highly recommend you pre-order it. Turns out that truthering has been prevalent among world leaders since the dawn of human civilization, which is oddly soothing but also HORRIFIC.

Keeping with the cronyism theme, head over to Deadspin where my friend David Roth welcomes the new baseball season with this brilliant essay about how billionaire owners have ground the game into dust. SO MAGICAL!

Also at Deadspin, Luis Paez-Pumar chronicles how a stupid novelty hot dog blog symbolizes the final nail in the coffin of once-mighty Sports Illustrated.

Hey, did you know that drinking tea supposedly gives you throat cancer? Congrats to science for ruining yet ANOTHER thing I want to just relax and enjoy. I brewed TWO pots of tea this morning and drank them, just to stick it to BIG RESEARCH STUDY. What are they gonna do about it, arrest me for teatime? I don’t think so. I’m gonna drink even more tea now—with spicy red pepper paste!—because I’m super punk like that. Bob Mould would be proud.

Here’s a tribute to comedian Dave Attell over at the New York Times. “Eggnog - who thought that one up? I wanna get a little drunk, but I also want some pancakes."

ICYMI on GQ

  • Us is coming and I’m still trying to decide if I’m too big of a fraidy-cat to actually go watch it. Horror movies fuck me up. Read Joshua Rivera’s glowing review here.

  • Enjoy this cover story of J. Cole, who has risen to prominence at an age relatively older than when most artists blow up (he’s 34), and makes it clear that he knows exactly what to do with that prominence.

  • You’ve probably already seen takes about how Andrew Gillum is doing the kind of groundwork that vanity Democratic presidential candidates OUGHT to be doing right now instead of standing on the counter at a greasy spoon in Iowa. Allow my colleague Jay Willis to break down just how vital that groundwork is.

  • I ate a PB&J sandwich with mustard on top, ostensibly as a way of goofing on Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post. Instead, I’m the one who ended up taking Ls from every direction because I used Dijon mustard instead of yellow mustard, the way Steinberg did. There are PB&J&M purists out there, and they will fuck you up horror movie-style if you don’t get it right. I’m still licking my wounds, but holding the mustard on ‘em.