Wow. Popped this disc in last night after 5 years and damn it's good. Sure the programmed drums sound a little stiff, but that's what makes this disc so freaking great....it's not perfect and it's the work of a great artist trying to do it all himself for the first time. GREAT tunes on this disc with exception of 2 or 3 duds. MUCH better than LDAPS which sounded pretty generic.

"Anymore Time Between" opens Bob Mould's "Hubcap" album on a down-tuned, downbeat note. Mould's voice sounds forlorn, and his lyrics are hopeless and downcast. None of these musical characteristics are exactly foreign elements from Mould, and to the guy's credit, he spices up the song as it moves along with driving chords and a faster pace. The following tune, "I Hate Alternative Rock," pretty much speaks for itself in terms of subject matter, and it's where the album gets interesting. This song could have come from Sugar just four years earlier -- that's how cool it is. "Alternative Rock" is a blast of sugar-powered rock and roll that ranks up there with Mould's most supreme work: killer riffs all over the place that come off as frantic; strained, double-tracked vocals (how Mould sounds best) buried in the heavy, wall-of-sound mix; and pissed-off lyrics about the state of the music industry to boot. "Fort Knox, King Solomon" is mellower, much more breezy, and also sugar-powered pop rock. On it, Mould strums his trademark bright-sounding acoustic guitar to drive the song along, and it's good to hear lyrics from him that stray from personal problems with lovers, personal demons and low self-esteem. The carefree "For Knox" sounds as if it's about bank robbers who attempted a big score but failed miserably. (My interpretation is probably dead wrong but I'm sticking to it.)

Most of this album is indeed a venting of personal frustrations by Mould, as solid tunes like "Next Time That You Leave," "Hair Stew" and "Roll Over and Die" will attest to. The good this is, "Bob Mould" is heavy on electric guitar and is pretty tuneful throughout, just like past Sugar albums. "Hair Stew" comes across as downright eerie (you might want to avoid it), but "Deep Karma Canyon" and especially "Art Crisis" pick things back up in a huge way to wind down the CD. For the record, "Art Crisis" is one of the best songs on the album. A portion of the driving guitar on that song is reminiscent of Sugar's "Mind is an Island" from the band's swan-song CD entitled Besides.

One could argue that there's a bit of a one-dimensional feel to this album, perhaps because Mould so singlehandedly created it, and that makes for songs that are a tad less exciting than what Sugar was doing earlier on in the 1990s (see Copper Blue). Still, "Bob Mould" is worthy, and anytime this artist plugs in his guitar, it's usually cause to open up your ears and listen.

I've probably listened to this album at least once a month since it came out 12 years ago & never tire of it -- Huskers, Sugar, Modulate, Body of Song etc. come and go but this just sticks. One of the eight CDs I brought with me when spending 2 years in rural Africa.

Even Mould himself, in the interview that appears on the bonus disc accompanying The Last Dog And Pony Show, admits that this album is a little stiff. And indeed, it is. But I'm not sure I would have liked whiny tracks like "Art Crisis" or "I Hate Alternative Rock" even if the arrangements had been more limber.

"Egoverride" is a pretty good single, and "Deep Karma Canyon" hums along nicely. Plus, the cover art is pretty nifty. But it's by no means an essential part of Mould's oeuvre.

Okay: of Bob's five solo albums to date, I'm going to go out on a limb and declare this to be the finest (with full awareness that I will most likely be set upon by a thousand deeply offended "Workbook" fans). There just isn't any filler on this one. My favorites are the tracks that another reviewer has accurately described as the "slow burn" numbers: "Anymore Time Between," "Next Time That You Leave," and "Roll Over And Die" (which closes the album on every bit as harrowing a note as "Explode And Make Up" did on Bob's previous effort, aka Sugar's swan song). There's plenty of other great stuff here, though. Check out "Eg0verride," in which Bob playfully pulls off a lyrically self-deprecating, seemingly electric-guitar-drenched melodic tour de force which actually doesn't feature his signature instrument at all. (Yep: it's all keyboards, fed through what must have been a rat's nest of effects.) Check out the metaphor-driven, acoustic relationship epitaph "Thumbtack" and decide for yourself whether you believe Bob that he wrote it on the fly and recorded it in a single take. Check out "Hair Stew" -- with its big sign reading, "Hi, I'm this album's Experimental Track" -- and keep checking it out until you're convinced that it's a little bit brilliant in its melodic and emotional dissonance. (At the very least, you will end up granting me that it's significantly less annoying than "Megamanic" from the followup album.) And if you still miss that iconic Sugar sound, you've got the blistering "I Hate Alternative Rock," the coulda-shoulda-been-a-single "Deep Karma Canyon," and "Art Crisis" (which loses points in my book only because it's musically and lyrically redundant with "IHAR").

One final note: some have criticized this album for being entirely self-recorded and self-produced on Bob's part, with particular criticism reserved for the electronic drums. As a drummer, I can honestly say that they don't bug me; in fact, I find them considerably less annoying than some of Grant Hart's work with Husker Du. ;)