MTV NEWS: First off, the new album seems to mark a departure of some of the themes from your last record, on which you played all the parts and instruments. Would you say that "Last Dog and Pony Show" is less introspective?

MOULD: Yeah, well with the '96 eponymous record, the one I keep calling "Hub Cap" now because of the cover art, that was a pretty claustrophobic sounding album. It was pretty introspective, sort of dark, sort of a real self-centered record. The stories weren't real outgoing, they weren't real universal.

[With "Last Dog and Pony Show,"] this was partially a result of being back in New York where you're sort of confronted with people on a minute-by-minute basis. I got out of my shell maybe and just started singing things outward instead of looking inward, and I think that tends to make a brighter record.

And I can tell with people hearing it right away when it was done, everybody was like, "Oh, this is it, this is it." I knew the songs were good and it sort of got smooth-sounding and sort of commercial in a way and I was like, "Uh, there's nothing I can do about this, people will like this record so I'm not going to mess with it too much."

MTV NEWS: You've come out and said this will be your final tour with a full-electric band. How did you come to decide its was time to make a fork-in-the-road career decision?

MOULD: I've had a long run at it and it's been a lot of fun -- but there's a number of reasons [why I want to stop]. I think the main reason is that it gets really invasive to my life as opposed to my career. What happens is that I put these tours together and I'm gone for two or three months at a time. You know, when putting a full band and a crew and the big production together it sort of has to be that way to pay for itself otherwise it doesn't make any money and nobody can get paid and it will never happen. But logistics sort of dictate that it has to be these long stretches of time.

Invariably what happens is I lose touch with my friends and family and people that I'm close to and it's hard for me as a person to rebuild those friendships three months later. It's like I can't drop it and then pick up where I left off. You know it just sort of messes with my head a little bit. It's like, "Wait a minute, I want to have maybe like a regular life like other people for a change. You know I like to travel, I love to play music but there's got to be another way."

[But like the preview] shows in January, the acoustic shows, where it's just me and my guitars -- I can do that anytime, anywhere and be home the next day. Or I can just go for a week, and it keeps my life in tact. The dog knows who I am when I come home. So after 20 years of service to the industry, I think I have to pick up my gold watch and go home.

And also I think there's a point where I'm not going to be as interested in getting up there and punking out with a bunch of guys with guitars. I mean some people love the Crazy Horse stuff (Neil Young's long-running electric band), and they love Crazy Horse and you know and it's like, "Look how old those guys are and look how much fun they're having." That doesn't seem like it would be fun for me. I don't know if I want to go there you know. It's hard, when I get up there with an electric guitar, with other guys, making that racket really loud, jumping around, you know people will always have a fixed impression of me in Husker Du or me in Sugar or me as they see it this year and it's gonna get to be diminishing returns. At some point I'm gonna get older and not gonna be able to do the things I used to be able to do and I don't want to be that you know.