In late 1988, following the dissolution of Husker Du in one of the most acrimonious breakups of the decade, Bob Mould settled into a house in the country and went about making a clean break from the past. He decided the best way to do that was to turn the amps down closer to 1 than 11 and record an album more muted and contemplative than probably even he would have thought himself capable ofa few years earlier.
For
Workbook,
Mould relied heavily on the 12 string acoustic guitar he starting playing towards the end of Husker Du, replaced his Flying V with a Stratocaster and added strings to his arsenal. Where Husker Du filled its songs with blankets of distortion and rapid drum fills,
Workbook is spacious and unhurried.
Of course, none of this is to say that
Workbook is the work of a man at peace with himself. In fact, the album's duality lies in the fact that Mould had anger and resentment to spare. There are times when those emotions take centre stage. "Lonely Afternoon" is as indignant as it is introspective, propelled by multi-tracked vocals that complement the notion of a man at war with himself. Mould was Kurt Cobain's first choice to produce
Nevermind, and Cobain had clearly taken cues from Mould's self-directed anger. "Poison Years", a merciless attack on Grant Hart, throws subtlety out the window; "treason is the reason for my poison years". For the most part, though, the album benefits from restraint and balance. When the intentionally jarring rocker "Whichever the Wind Blows" comes along to close the album, it feels as though Mould has earned the right to cut loose.
Workbook 25 celebrates the you-know-what anniversary of the album by giving it decent remaster and a bonus track ("All Those People Know") and pairing it with a recording of a concert from May 1989, a month after the album's original release. The set includes every song from
Workbook as well as "All Those People Know", and a cover of Richard Thompson's "Shoot Out the Lights" and closes with solo acoustic versions of Husker Du's "Hardly Getting Over It", "Celebrated Summer" and "Makes No Sense At All". The stark, vulnerable rendition of "Hardly Getting Over It" is the highlight for me. The reissue also comes with extended liner notes, including contemporary reviews and an essay by Michael Azzerad to which this review owes credit for some of the details of the album's back story.
