Bob Mould loves Pro Wrestling.

I'm a modern kind of guy, and I can generally tolerate all sorts of weirdness when it comes to matters of personal taste.

Pro wrestling, however, has shattered many promising relationships in my life. Relationships with otherwise beautiful and intelligent girls, lifelong friends, even bars.

I'm unwilling to believe that a mentally healthy person can spend any amount of time watching pro wresting on television. I'd rather spend an evening listening to to collective works of L. Ron Hubbard read as Beat Poetry while sitting in a darkened room filled with whiskey-drunk Scientologists, than spend an evening on a couch watching WWF Raw with wrestling fans.

I have no constitution for it, it's complete gibberish, and everything about it is affronting to right thinking people.

That having been said - Bob Mould is passionate about pro wresting. He even worked for the WCW as scriptwriter for a short period of time. Bob is of course, eternally forgiven this apparent character flaw, thanks to the weight of his contribution to rock and roll. Consider it a sort of diplomatic immunity.

His work with Hüsker Dü will always be stacked high with accolades by music people, and for good reason. The albums between 1981 and 1987 changed the direction of rock and roll, for the better, I promise. They invented what was marketed as 'Alternative', and they forged the ground for pop-punk. After Hüsker Dü imploded in an environment rich with drug abuse and rumored homosexual love affairs, there were two solo releases for Virgin, both of them solid and groundbreaking in their own right.

Mould formed Sugar in 1992, and released two albums: 'Copper Blue', and 'File Under: Easy Listening'. Buy these records, it's power-pop/pop-punk/power-punk/whatever at it's brilliant pinnacle.

There's a new Bob Mould record out now on Anti, it's called District Line. Ten tracks, with some slightly folksy stuff balanced nicely with his unrelenting rock and roll guitar loving tunes - all of them quite infecting.

The highest praise of this record is that you don't really need to delve into Mould's impressive discography for perspective. This record slays on it's own merits.

Download: Bob Mould - The Silence Between Us

Buy it: [iTunes]