LoudBomb
Long Playing Grooves

The "official reviewer" of Bob Mould's discography, when faced with this chilly yet juicy "Long Playing Grooves" from 2003, should first ask if this work resembles, at least from the strictly compositional point of view, any other album by Mould, perhaps starting with that "Modulate" from the previous year, the least traditional and most sophisticated work of his production up to that point. And the answer would be "kind of"...

Although Bob adopted an acronym to dare more, although he had been an increasingly expert connoisseur of electromusic for a decade and then some, and had embarked on a second life as a live DJ in East Coast clubs for years, when it's not about simply proposing a tracklist or remixing other people's stuff, but when one's own pen, mind, creativity, and flair are involved, well then the discourse changes, and not just a little. And finding completely new ideas, in the face of twenty years of career, cannot be easy...

Indeed, there are at least four tracks that could easily be rearranged and re-recorded in a pop-rock key, or at least for which it's very easy to identify "traditional" matrices. The most striking case is "This Is The Way I Want It", where a guitar arpeggio dripping on these liquid sounds already betrays quite a bit. And the track consists, essentially, solely of the refrain of one of his rock ballads... And this, in the end, is the formula of "dance", in all its styles and subgenres: simplify... Most often it's the vocal part that's sacrificed, reduced to choruses without verses, or perhaps to verses without a chorus, as Bob does in "Devil V. Angel", a catchy and danceable episode all in falsetto, fast and pounding (pounded no less by real drums), followed by five minutes of very ambient instrumental...

One can also choose to take the more delicate episodes and turn them into sweet synthetic pop, like the heavily vocodered and beautiful "Guys Like You", or even take a track that was born as unpolished and not very melodic rock, perhaps destined to serve as a B-side or to never see the light, and radically change its arrangements, adding dub lines, notes of distant xylophone, and various reverberations... Maybe still, as in the "ex rock" of "I Cannot Reverse You", without stripping it of its original pounding four-four time...

When you understand electronic music, leftovers no longer exist... A song that didn't come out well? Remix. A verse to which you can't attach the right chorus? A chorus without verses? No problem! That's why, in part, it could be considered a Bob Mould record like the others...

But there are reasons for the opposite view as well, and they are no less... They begin with the almost spoken word opening of "Theme (It's A Perfect Day)", melody and noises that slowly, calmly take off, or in "BB DuBois", another spoken word whose rhythm is a cross between certain cool jazz and old house... Keyboards always quite "Orbital-like" for a track that is neither ambient nor club, nor jazz nor house, let alone chill when the sampled bass drum is supplanted by bongos. It becomes impossible to discover who's hiding behind (inside) the LoudBomb when listening to the suggestive club episodes of "Factory Builders Convention" and "Heaven's On Fire", with rapid bass and endless electronic tips, where even the two delicate, understated yet pleasant guitar solos have not the slightest taste of what once was. And if the solutions for "We Need The Truth" seem strange, with a funky '80s chorus in Prince style trapped in a tank of amniotic fluid, hypnosis is almost inevitable for the listener of "Helium", on a house rhythm: the monotone singing and Mould's timbre, very effective on long notes, supported by spatial keyboards and luminous tips, make the closing track of the album as good as the famous, daring yet successful caustic episodes (those I call "magnetic storm") at the end of the tracklists of the "traditional" Mould albums.

A cold work, more autumnal than wintery, "Long Playing Grooves" is an album that grows with each listening, one that the ears of "insiders" and genre experts can only appreciate, and that can easily conquer both those who know nothing and the connoisseur, the "expert" of Bob Mould.

Or not?