Bob Mould Band, Live at The Brudenell

Brudenell presents...

BOB MOULD BAND
+ special guests.. TBA

15.3.19 | £23.00 Advance | 19:30 Doors
Tickets on sale Friday 26th October, at 10am

https://www.facebook.com/bobmouldmusic/
http://bobmould.com

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The
cliché that circulated after the 2016 election foretold a new artistic
golden age: Art-ists would transform their anger and anxiety into
era-defining works of dissent in the face of authoritarianism.

Yet Bob Mould calls his new album Sunshine Rock.

It’s
not because Mould—whose face belongs on the Mount Rushmore of
alternative music—likes the current administration. His decision to
“write to the sunshine,” as he describes it, comes from a more personal
place – a place found in Berlin, Germany, where he’s spent the majority
of the last three years. Here Mould would draw inspira-tion from the new
environments.

“Almost four years ago, I made plans for an
extended break,” Mould explains. “I started spending time in Berlin in
2015, found an apartment in 2016, and became a resident in 2017. My time
in Berlin has been a life changing experience. The winter days are long
and dark, but when the sun comes back, all spirits lift.”

These three years in Berlin would quite literally shed new light on Mould’s everyday mindset.

“To
go from [2011 autobiography] See a Little Light to the last three
albums, two of which were informed by loss of each parent, respectively,
at some point I had to put a Post-It note on my work station and say,
‘Try to think about good things.’ Otherwise I could really go down a
long, dark hole,” he says. “I’m trying to keep things brighter these
days as a way to stay alive.”

That makes Sunshine Rock as logical
a product of the current climate as any rage-fueled agit-rock.
Variations on the word “sun” appear 27 times in five different songs
over the course of the album’s 37 minutes. To hear Mould tell it, the
theme developed early.

“‘Sunshine Rock’ was such a bright,
optimistic song, and once that came together, I knew that would be the
title track, and that really set the tone for the direction of the
al-bum,” Mould says. “It was funny, because writing with that as the
opener in mind, it was like, ‘This is not Black Sheets of Rain.’”

Mould’s
famously dour 1990 solo album still serves as a point of reference: a
title track that sets the tone for the album, though on Sunshine Rock,
it’s the opposite of Rain.

This being Bob Mould, Sunshine Rock
still has darker moments. “Lost Faith,” for ex-ample, has him quietly
lamenting, “I’ve lost faith in everything / Everything, everything.” The
Mould of 1990 may have wallowed in the feeling, but the Mould of 2018
jumps in-to a hooky, bombastic chorus where he sings, “Really gotta stop
this now, this is your / Last chance to turn around, I know we / All
lose faith from time to time, you / Better find your way back home.”

Those
cathartic moments in “Lost Faith” foreground a surprising element of
Sunshine Rock: Mould’s rawest vocals since his throat-shredding days in
Hüsker Dü. It started when Mould and the band—drummer Jon Wurster and
bassist Jason Narducy—had extra time in the studio with Mould’s longtime
engineer, Beau Sorenson. They settled on a cover of Shocking Blue’s
“Send Me a Postcard,” and Mould decided to lay down vocals right there.

“This
was the first real vocal take during the session. I walked to the mic,
not knowing how I would sing these words. Three minutes later, I went
back into the control room and everyone was like, ’What the fuck, that
was wild!’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty good!’ That was the only take,
and that’s what you hear on the album.”

“After that moment, I
learned to let go and be more spontaneous with my vocals. Be-cause of
that, there’s way more emotion on this album. Perhaps I was ironing some
of that out in the past by double- and triple-tracking vocals, hoping
for some perfect pop result.”

The rawness of the vocals
counterbalances the strings that appear on five songs. Alt-hough Mould
has experimented with small-scale string accompaniment on previous
albums, Sunshine Rock ambitiously incorporates an 18-piece orchestra.

“I
had this idea as we were right up on recording, ‘Why not take some of
these extra melodies that I’ve got kicking around and build them all
into string arrangements?’” Mould says. “I like really big, dense
chordal structures and rhythm guitars, those layers that come at you.
This time, I was just trying to be mindful of adding more melody.”

Mould
wrote the string parts, which collaborator Alison Chesley transcribed
for the var-ious instruments with some input from consultant Paul
Martens. The Prague TV Or-chestra spent a day recording the parts while
he listened remotely from his home stu-dio in San Francisco. The process
came together so easily, Mould laughs, “It’s going to be tough not to
use them now.”

It all amounts to Mould’s catchiest, grabbiest
album since Copper Blue, the acclaimed 1992 debut of his trio Sugar.
Back then, Mould’s work in Hüsker Dü, as a solo artist, and in Sugar
helped define the sound of guitar rock in the alternative age. Sunshine
Rock finds him doing it again for an era that has ostensibly eschewed
rock.

“I’ve heard this thing about ‘guitars are dead’ at least
five times, and they always seem to come back,” he says. “For better or
worse, this is what I do. I think there’s a lot of people trying to
aspire to make great albums. That’s really what this is about: trying to
make great rock albums for people because there’s not that many
anymore.”

Maybe that cliché about great art coming from strife could be true—but who would’ve guessed it’d be called Sunshine Rock?

“Sunshine Rock is one helluva way to wrap up the busiest decade of my career,” he
shares. “The autobiography, the Disney Hall tribute show, reissues of
several albums from my catalog, three current rock band albums, several
world tours, and now this new album — I’m humbled and grateful to still
be making new music while celebrating my lifetime songbook.”

Merge Records will release Sunshine Rock on February 8, 2019.