Cut Bob Some Slack

File Under Easy Listening has been maligned for being too similar to Copper Blue. And no doubt, I'm in that camp. Whenever I see this album on Amazon, I see it in the one-cent ghetto. In local record stores, it's usually on that huge wall of CDs that's marked "3 for $3", along with CDs from Deadeye Dick and a Backstreet Boys single.

But like most of Bob Mould's post-Husker Du output (at least before he dabbled into techno), there was at least a genuine stab at creating a truly great pop song. That was Bob Mould's Moby Dick. Yes, there were tons of moments on albums like Zen Arcade that had Mould screaming at the top of his lungs amidst a wall of ear-piercing feedback, but he also had an amazing sense of rhythm, which was accentuated on the brilliant New Day Rising.

So, I've spent the last couple of weeks transferring any remaining CDs that didn't make it to my removable hard drive...to my removable hard drive. It's a great way to rediscover some works that have been gathering some serious dust (see Virgin Suicides soundtrack, Smashing Pumpkins' "Zero" maxi-single, complete with a 20-minute plus song). Sure enough, File Under Easy Listening came up.

The album is no Copper Blue, but it certainly doesn't deserved to be left with stacks of other forgotten CDs at a failing record store. If only for the song "Gee Angel." It's pure Sugar - watery guitar riffs, Mould's driving vocals and a chorus that's difficult to shake.

The video is also a great snapshot of mid-90s nostalgia. The video's effects are so dated, they take on an endearing quality. The cartoons in the video are great - utterly familiar...you've seen these things before, but for the life of you, you don't remember where. They're not Warner Bros. They're not Hanna Barbara, they're not Disney, but you swear you've seen them sometime before - maybe on a cheap, locally-produced Sunday morning entertainment show for kids to watch while their moms and dad's get dressed up for church.

I got my back to the sun 'cause the light is too intense

Honestly, is there a better artist out there than Bob Dylan when it comes to delivering a great kiss-off to an ex, or even to someone you would have hoped to get to a stage that you could call him/her an ex?

Sure, you have the screamo champions out there, yelling at the top of their lungs about how a girl just stomped their heart into the ground. And for an older folk like me, it was Trent Reznor, singing about how he's now a "fading f*%*ing reminder of who I used to be" thanks to a woman in "Something I Can Never Have." And of course, if you're REALLY ticked off, your garden variety gangsta rap song will do for some quick catharsis.

But, to steal the cliche, time does heal wounds. And what would make a woman or man who wronged you angrier: Someone who is yelling and screaming in tears on the phone about how they ruined their life, or someone saying flatly, almost logically "You just kinda wasted my precious time..."

"Sugar Baby" is the second "epic" closer in Bob Dylan's phenomenal one-two punch (Time Out of Mind and Love And Theft) in the late '90s/early '00s. In "Highlands", the character summed up "the sun is beginning to shine on me, but it's not like the sun that used to be." On "Sugar Baby", the character has his back to the sun because "the light is too intense."

True, if they were sung by a lesser artist, critics wouldn't give a pass to a chorus like "Sugar baby get on down the road / you ain't got no brains nohow / you went years without me / 'might as well keep going now." But Dylan's grizzled, haunted voice, which sounds like wind whistling through the floorboards, packs a whallop.

Dylan's got bigger themes to tackle than just a breakup. Even if you're not a Dylan fan, I challenge anyone not to nod in agreement after a horrible day in their life when he says "every moment of existence seems like some dirty trick." He holds on to "dirty", giving it a bit of a growl. Then he flatly says "Happiness can come suddenly then leave just as quick."

Had a crap day? This song's for you.

Yes, he has a licence for that mustache