Bob Mould – Patch The Sky
Former Hüsker Dü linchpin's midlife hot-streak continues on eleventh solo album.
“CAN I FIND some truth within the noise?” ponders Bob Mould amid new album opener Voices In My Head: a rhetorical question, for Mould’s 35-year journey has been driven by this internal dialectic.
Remarkably, the alt-rock pioneer still sounds inspired by both sides of the equation on Patch The Sky, 12 songs that divide sonically between a slamming first half full of ascending melodies, followed by its more turbulent second side, but where the proximity of personal demons and raging guitar harmonics is a constant.
Pray For Rain (“We could use a storm or two every day”) has to be one of the most perversely uplifting songs about depression Mould has ever written, while Black Confetti is the intense, complusive sound of a man’s soul plugged into the planet’s molten core. Following the creative rebirth of 2012’s Silver Age and 2014’s Beauty & Ruin, this is another definitive work.
Get the latest issue of MOJO, (May 2016 / #270) on sale now in the UK, for Keith Cameron’s extensive interview with Bob Mould, plus watch the video for Voices In My Head, below, now.