Bob Mould, Sunshine Rock
The cliché that circulated after the 2016 election foretold a new artistic golden age: Artists 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.
“To go from [2011 memoir] See a Little Light to the last three albums, two of which were informed by loss of each parent, respectively, at some point you really have to put a Post-It note on your work station and say, ‘Try to think about good things.’ Otherwise you can really go down a long, dark hole,” he says. “I’m just trying to keep things a little bit brighter these days as a way to stay alive, I guess.”
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 things on the back side,” 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 example, 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 into 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.
“That was pretty much the first time I opened my mouth at a 100 percent on the floor during the session,” Mould says. “That vocal came out, and everybody was just like, ‘What the fuck?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty good!’”
“I think instead of belaboring every syllable and double- and triple-tracking everything, because of ‘Send Me a Postcard,’ I was like, ‘Shit, just go,’” Mould says. “There’s a lot of emotion in these vocals, and maybe I was ironing some of that out in the past by stacking things up and going for that exact pop vocal.”
The rawness of the vocals counterbalances the strings that appear on five songs. Although 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 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 various instruments with some input from consultant Paul Martens. An orchestra in Prague—about 200 miles from Mould’s current home base of Berlin, where he’s lived for three years—spent a day recording the parts while he listened remotely. 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 1991 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?
Merge Records will release Sunshine Rock on February 8.