Blue Hearts

Description

In the winter of 2019, Bob Mould bucked the eras despair with his most melodic, upbeat album in ages, Sunshine Rock.

Cut to spring of 2020, and he has this to say: Were really in deep shit now.
That sentiment informs the new full-length album, Blue Hearts (Merge, September 25), the raging-but-catchy yin to Sunshine Rocks yang.

To be sure, we were in some shit back in 2018, when Mould recorded Sunshine Rock with longtime colleagues Jon Wurster (drums), Jason Narducy (bass), and Beau Sorenson (engineer). Back then, he had a song called American Crisis that didnt fit the album.

That song is the seed for what were talking about now, Mould says from his home in San Francisco during the COVID-19 lockdown. At the time, it just seemed too heavy. Today it seems fucking quaint.
American Crisis is the third song in a walloping first half of an album that spits plainspoken fire at the people who fomented this crisis. This is the catchiest batch of protest songs Ive ever written in one sitting, he says.

Through some of the most direct, confrontational lyrics of his four-decade career, Mould makes his POV clear: I never thought Id see this bullshit again / To come of age in the 80s was bad enough / We were marginalized and demonized / I watched a lot of my generation die / Welcome back to American crisis.
Why welcome back? Because Mould experienced deja vu writing Blue Hearts in the fall of 2019. Where it started to go in my head is back to a spot that Ive been in before, he says. And that was the fall of 1983.

Back then, Mould was a self-described 22-year-old closeted gay man touring with the legendary Hüsker Dü and seeing an epidemic consume his community. Leaders, including the one in the White House, were content to let AIDS kill a generation. Mould later realized why his mind wandered back there for Blue Hearts.

We have a charismatic, telegenic, say-anything leader being propped up by evangelicals, he says. These fuckers tried to kill me once. They didnt do it. They scared me. I didnt do enough. Guess what? Im back, and were back here again. And Im not going to sit quietly this time and worry about alienating anyone.
Recorded at the famed Electrical Audio in Chicago with Sorenson engineering and Mould producing, Blue Hearts nods to Moulds past while remaining firmly planted in the issues of the day. Acoustic opener Heart on My Sleeve catalogues the ravages of climate change. Next Generation worries for who comes next. American Crisis references Evangelical ISIS and features this dagger of a line: Pro-life, pro-life until you make it in someone elses wife.

There are songs that have no room, Mould says, laughing. The other songs, theres room. There is room for imagination on the second half of the record.
Thats where the songs turn personal in a different way. Tracks like When You Left, Siberian Butterfly, and Everyth!ng to You are grounded in personal relationships. Racing to the End captures the economic disparity of Moulds neighborhood, and Leather Dreams well, maybe Jon Wurster put it best.

Jon turns to Jason and asks, Is this the dirtiest song youve ever played on? Mould recalls with a chuckle. I clearly did not put the edit tool to that one. Those are all pretty true bits. What kind of person could possibly have a life like that? He laughs again. Says the author.
Leather Dreams, Password to My Soul, and The Ocean were composed during a writing binge before a January 2020 Solo Electric tour, when Mould stayed up for three straight days. Songs just kept coming out, he says. Leather Dreams and The Ocean both appeared within hours. I barely remember writing them.

That feels right for an explosive, hook-laden album like Blue Hearts. Only theres nothing forgettable about it.