Bob Mould "Workbook" (1989)

Workbook [debut]
release date: Apr. 1989
format: vinyl (209 938) / cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,64]
producer: Bob Mould
label: Virgin Records - nationality: USA

Track highlights: 1. "Sunspots" - 2. "Wishing Well" - 3. "Heartbreak a Stranger" - 4. "See a Little Light" (4 / 5) - 5. "Poison Years" - 6. "Sinners and Their Repentances" - 7. "Brasilia Crossed With Trenton" - 11. "Whichever Way the Wind Blows"

Studio album debut by Bob Mould after the disbandment of Hüsker Dü (1988). The year also gave us his former band mate Grant Hart's fine solo debut Intolerance (Dec. '89).
Workbook really shows a new side to the energetic punk rocker and power pop artist with its many acoustic driven compositions. It basically draws on the same musical influences as his former trio but it's much more of a singer / songwriter and folk rock-oriented release, which in many ways has more in common with some of Neil Young's releases with Crazy Horse than the power pop and punk rock of Hüsker Dü.
I think, the album is good but not really great. Its weakness is the huge pot of styles and genres represented and a blunt sensation of incoherency. It's both slow, ballad-like and blazingly angry and filled with white noise, but it's a nice treat to have a first full solo album from one of the main composer of one of the most important punk rock bands coming out of the USA, and the album also shows us that Mould has more to offer the world.
[ allmusic.com 4,5 / 5 stars ]