Blue Hearts

In 2019, Bob Mould bucked the era’s despair with his melodic, upbeat album Sunshine Rock. Cut to spring 2020, and he has this to say: “We’re really in deep shit now.” That sentiment informs his new full-length album, Blue Hearts, the raging-but-catchy yin to Sunshine Rock’s yang. To be sure, we were in some shit in 2018, when Mould recorded Sunshine Rock. Back then, he had a song called “American Crisis” that didn’t fit the album. “That song is the seed for what we’re talking about now,” Mould says from his home in San Francisco during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“American Crisis” is the third song in a walloping album that spits plainspoken
fire at the people who fomented this crisis. “This is the catchiest batch of protest
songs I’ve 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 I’d 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 I’ve 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 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 didn’t do it. They scared me. I didn’t do enough. Guess what? I’m back, and we’re back here again. And I’m not going to sit quietly this time and worry about alienating anyone.”

RIYL 

Tracklisting 

1. Heart on My Sleeve
2. Next Generation
3. American Crisis
4. Fireball
5. Forecast of Rain
6. When You Left
7. Siberian Butterfly
8. Everyth!ng to You
9. Racing to the End
10. Baby Needs a Cookie
11. Little Pieces
12. Leather Dreams
13. Password to My Soul
14. The Other