I’d sworn off Bob after seeing him do his live solo act back in 2004 or so. It was a horrible thing with recorded music and video on a big screen behind him, and left me depressed about my own creative future as I, like Bob, plunged toward mid-life.

After all, Husker Du changed my definitions about music, and seeing Bob do a solo acoustic guitar show in the early nineties was one of the best shows I’ve seen. Ten years later, I left that disaster in 2004 wondering how Bob could go so far off the rails.

Well, having listened to some more recent stuff, I feel better. District Line wasn’t good enough to justify buying the whole album, but I picked off three songs I liked the best having listened to samples, and bought mp3s: Stupid Now, Who Needs to Dream, and The Silence Between Us. These songs are nice and comfortable, like seeing an old friend from long ago.

From doing a bit of reading, it seems Bob Mould is a DJ, and into House and other forms I’m not interested in. That’s fine with me. He’s still searching, and that’s all any of us can do. I think he was just lost for a bit.