The word critics most often use to describe Mike Watt's music is "elliptical", which should give you some idea just how difficult describing his music is. Ever since his time as bassist for punk/funk legends Minutemen, Watt has specialized in music of evasion. Most punk rock barrels forward; his music is a constant sideways skitter. His songs never take the straight route, but they still manage to get where they're going faster than anyone else, depositing a few unlodgeable sounds in your ear and disappearing all in the elapsed time it takes for you to mutter, "Huh?"

No one can maintain that kind of high-step forever. Mike Watt is 53 now, and hyphenated-man, his new solo record, is a meditation on that truth, a punk-rock lifer's shit-eating-grin look at mortality. A lot of aging men in rock make this record eventually, the one that takes baleful stock of their accumulated scars, settles debts, issues pronouncements. The "Regrets? I've had a few" record. Often, they sag under the leaden weight of their subject matter.

But not Mike Watt's version — his is, well, more elliptical. There are myriad ways to moan "I'm gettin' old" in rock 'n' roll, but nobody else has… read more »