As one of America's best songwriters – first with Hüsker Dü, then in various other contexts (on solo albums such as Workbook and Black Sheets of Rain for example, and in power-trio Sugar) – Bob Mould has little left to prove, although he still sounds compelled to prove something. Silver Age is shot through with themes of endurance, of learning to live with painful memories, and if a few reviewers have taken the 'The Descent' (in an alternate universe, the hit single) to be hinting at a Hüsker reunion, we should doubt it; each song comes with a little visual icon, and the icon for the regretful 'Fugue State' exactly copies Hüsker Dü's old band logo but minus the vertical line that signified group unity. Silver Age itself is unified by its sound, a gleaming wall of roaring guitars and hammering drums, the sound of a middle-aged punk doing his damnedest to 'push against gravity', and taking flight far more often than not: 'Keep Believing' in particular is gloriously obvious, and obviously glorious.