Life and Times

After spending the ’00s turning more introspective and, at times, electronic, Bob Mould capped the decade with an album that mediates between his middle-aged preoccupations and his punk past. The title track is an exemplar: Beginning as a plaintive acoustic elegy, it acquires a slow-burning intensity by layering on foreboding strings and dissonant guitars. But if the brutally frank folk serenade “Bad Blood Better” proves Mould needn’t turn up the volume to get heavy, “Argos” reasserts his mastery of frenetic fuzz pop.