As a member of alternative punk band Hüsker Dü and crunch-pop outfit Sugar, Bob Mould became legendary for blissful guitar melodies and personal lyrics that explored his inner angst. (He also wrote “Dog on Fire,” the Daily Show theme.) Having come out of the closet in the ’90s, he moved to Washington, DC, co-founded an enormously popular dance party, and released a pair of electronic albums. Like his previous disc, Body of Song, however, his latest CD, District Line, is mostly the guitar-based rock his fans know and love. The most shocking thing about his lyrics nowadays? He sounds so comfortable in his own skin. Mould plays the Paradise on Wednesday.
Will you be playing Sugar and Hüsker Dü songs on this tour?
Yeah. When I was touring Body of Song, I opened up the songbook to a handful of Hüsker Dü and Sugar songs, and it went over pretty well. They sounded good. I think people can expect more of the same, as well as a fair amount of the new record.
Would you say guitar rock remains your true love?
I’m guessing it [District Line’s guitar focus] is kind of a combination of two things — because Body of Song felt like a better fit to me, and because I got back out and played with a band in ’05. When I’m spending more time with the guitar, I typically write more with the guitar. It’s actually sort of that simple.
The stories on District Line feel, for lack of a better word, less angsty than those on your earlier albums.
I would agree with that. There’s a fair amount more resignation to the fact that life is exactly what it is, and there’s not a whole lot you can do to change it. You’ve just got to be in it. District Line is emotionally a bit broader than the other records, I think. There’s a fair amount of observation going on, about the simple stories of life, the simple stories of relationships. That’s what keeps all of us going, day after day. I don’t think it’s avarice, and I don’t think it’s lust — I think it’s wanting to belong in places with other people. I think these stories are observations on people that come and go, people that stay and then go, people that don’t show up. I think that’s really the core of what we do as people. We measure life by relationships and happiness and loss, and these are the stories in my head about those things.
What do you like about Washington, DC?
I’ve been here almost six years. I’ve got a love/hate thing with it like I do with anywhere. There are things that are really amazing, mostly my friends. There’s a fair amount of sky, a fair amount of space. It’s getting more dense and redeveloped and may become a condo corridor if it’s not careful. There are a lot of old houses. It’s taken a while to find the good people, but now that I’ve found them I really enjoy that part of it. It’s well located for the kind of travel I do.
Is the city known for having a large, progressive gay community?
It is, I believe. I sort of live in the middle of it, and there are five or six distinct gay neighborhoods, in a city of a half million people. So there’s a good sense of community, which is important. I don’t know how comfortable I would be living in a city that didn’t have that to offer. It’s a young town, which keeps the turnover happening, which is both good and bad.
You write on your blog about your weightlifting routine. Do you feel it’s a big contributor to your emotional health?
Yeah, definitely. Since the beginning of 1999, that’s one of the first things I did when I got “out of the van,” after 20 years of being “in the van.” I started to take better care of myself, quit smoking, started eating right, and started being a lot more physically active.
You quit Hüsker Dü 20 years ago. What do you remember about that time?
Just picking up the phone and saying, “I quit!” It was a good feeling.
Was it difficult?
Yeah, but the next day, it was, like, amazing. It was like, “Oh my God, no more of that. Excellent. Now what do I do?” The absurd level at which things were operating at that point made it very easy to walk away. I thought, “Anything would be better than this.” But there was nothing waiting in the wings to replace it, which is the great part of the journey. It wasn’t as if, “Oh I’m leaving this for a better job.” It was just, “I’m leaving this.”
What were some of the absurd things that were happening?
You’ll have to read the book for that. Some day I’ll write a book.
