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"I've always been the type to write what you know," Bob Mold said of what he describes as a rainy morning in San Francisco. "So this time, I was trying to consciously create a slightly different world in which to work."
He ended up changing his world in two ways. On the one hand, he radically reworked his life and settled in Berlin for much of recent years. He does not speak German, but he immersed himself in the culture, started going out again in nightclub and changing his pace. On the other, he is challenged to write more positive songs. Sugar and his solo recordings, where he has written in various ways about his broken friendships at Hüsker Dü, are now singing love songs that are milder than they are sweet.
He started writing his last album, Sunshine Rock, towards the end of the year 2016, while he was in Berlin and that he had a revelation. "Suddenly, summer has arrived and" Sunshine Rock ", the song, has appeared," he says. "Then it became, 'Aha, that's the key. That's what I have to follow. It's the music, the song that makes me really happy. "He returned to Oakland to rejoin his longtime band, bbadist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster, and cut the 37-minute album, decorating it with string arrangements recorded by the band. Prague Television Orchestra and collapsing in the deepest of itself for positivity The disc contains 11 new songs ranging from snug to super happy and a cover of Shocking Blue's "Send Me a Postcard." He wrote the occasional song in reaction to the current presidential administration, but finally decided to retain them.
Despite the change of direction, Sunshine Rock sounds like a disc of Bob Mold with all the intense vocals and whirlwinds of guitars that define his more rock-oriented albums. As he prepares to hit the road again, he tells Rolling stone he does not worry at all that his new rays of sun trouble his lists. "The new work goes so well with the historical content with Sugar and Hüsker Dü," he says. "It just becomes a big song in a way.
"Someone has already tweeted something like," Oh, my God. I'm on a Bob Mold show and I think it's been an hour and a half of the same song. It's incredible, "he continues. "At first, I got a little offended, and then realized that no, it was actually:" Oh, cool. "Yeah, so everything is just an important thing."
How did life in Berlin lead you to a more positive album?
I went back to clubbing and it was really fun to revisit this idea of being anonymous in a space with people who are there just to worship music. And then, I'm going to Berghain on Easter Sunday to hear Todd Edwards. It's like "God, what part of his work has shaped what Daft Punk did?" [painter and sculptor] Robert Longo came during the week of art and he had an exhibition in a former car dealership called Everything falls A part. I'm like, "Oh, my God, I have not seen Longo for 30 years, and here he is with his new show named after my song." This kind of thing can happen anywhere, but Frequently, there was a really fun experience so far.
How did you focus on positivity?
I lost my father at about the same time [2014’s] Beauty and ruin and I lost my mother and did [2016’s] Patch the sky. So I said that I had to make a conscious effort to change my point of view differently. I think my work has always been pretty brilliant, but emotionally it can be darker. So I tried to get out of it. It was a way to keep getting up in the morning. It was a very conscious effort to write in the sun, to write about the brightest aspects of life and not to let those experiences fail.
As I get older, there are so many little things that I really try to simplify my thinking, living and affecting work. It was one of them. I just try to think brilliant. It will not be 100% brilliant, but I would try to think brilliant.
What did you think of the song "Sunshine Rock" that you had come across a new direction?
I wrote optimistically about the good times of the moment, which I do not normally do. So, it seemed like the keys that were entering the door.
In "Sunny Love Song" you sing about the pen, paper, guitar, grbad and imagination. Is this your general process?
Yeah, it'll work. Some days, weed. Some days, no. It depends on the time of day and where my head is, but it should be legal everywhere. If we can just get rid of Big Pharma and alcohol, maybe we can move the ball a little bit. They really do not want these competing products, is not it?
Have you had to rewrite songs to make them more positive?
No, everything is pretty much as it was written. Tracks 1 to 9, through "Lost Faith", were fairly well established and non-negotiable in terms of sequence. And then I had "Western Sunset" as the closest. Originally, I had two more songs for songs 10 and 11. One was rather upbeat, but the story was a bit harsh, and the other was really angry and political. I thought if I put two heavy songs before "Western Sunset", people will think it's a joke. I wrote "Camp Sunshine" on the last day of mixing, and [the Shocking Blue cover song] "Send me a postcard" was one of those we had in the pocket in the early days of the follow up.
On "Western Sunset", you sing that your "Wake Up Song" is "One More Time". We always talk about Daft Punk, is not it?
Yeah. It was actually "Music, it sounds better with you" from Stardust, but the title did not fit. But any Daft Punk song will work.
Will you soon be publishing your angry political songs?
If I have to do it. I hope that by the time of putting all chances aside, some of the protagonists of this horrible story will have disappeared.
Did you just want to give people a break from Trump?
I've gone through a lot of difficult times in my life, and it's the worst political solution I've ever seen. But damn it, if I'm going to pay him a service by naming him and letting him take my place. It already takes up too much space.
There are different ways to react. The other band of your drummer Jon Wurster, Superchunk, has criticized Trump with his latest album.
Yeah. The beauty is that I received a series of songs that I wrote when the situation was pretty bad the first time. [with Reagan], and all these words always apply. "In a Free Land" and "Divide and Conquer" always mean exactly the same thing as when I wrote them. It's just a new version. This is a new iteration of it. This is the problem of the evangelicals. It never ends.
You have always written songs of love, but those of this album seem a little more sincere than the others. Is it something that is more present in your life now?
Yeah. I am a little more in tune with myself, with the people I love, with the people of my life who bring a lot of joy. "With" Sunshine Rock ", get out of the portal right away with a love song. Woo! What happened?
What did you listen to at the time you wrote the album?
For the most part, I was away from my 60's pop singles collection, which I'm currently watching. This is usually the typical inspiration. I was listening to radio streaming to find new things, and I was going out too and I was seeing more bands in Berlin than I was in the United States. I do not think there was a specific event: "Oh, my God. This song by Courtney Barnett scared me. But it's one of the 50 things I find really cool in music right now.
You still had a Shocking Blue cover on the album, so there is at least one Sixties song.
That's because we took the lead in tracking and we had an extra day and a half. So we started making blankets. When I play this one for guys, they tell me, "It sounds really familiar to me." I say to myself, "Yes, that's been part of our intro music for five years now, every show we play. You hear well the time we finish the set list, about 15 minutes before walking on stage. "
What prompted you to use orchestral strings on the album?
When I write songs, I usually do pretty elaborate demos with guitars, bbades, and rhythm tracks. Often, I put keyboards reserved for melodic ideas. A few weeks before the start of the follow-up, I woke up and said to myself, "This record needs more melody." In the demos, I wrote a lot of things with organs or cellos in mind. and I thought, "I'm going to go. I will find an orchestra, build these parts and see what happens. "
My friend Alison Chesley helped me turn my simple sheet music into proper scores and I managed to find an orchestra in Prague. We recorded our basic songs, sent them to Prague and finished the ropes in one day. It was so much fun to do.
Have you played anything in your high school band?
No, they tried to put me on the tuba in fifth grade. I peeked and peeked at the snow outside – the snow dropped two feet high – and I said, "I'm not dragging this thing everyday on Main Street. "So I sang in the choir for a few years.
Unlike your most brilliant songs, there are still very dark ones. On "Thirty Dozen Roses," you sing despair.
Yeah, it's so blurry, but "Lost Faith" is a big problem. This one was one of the last ones I wrote, with "Final Years". I wrote those from Berlin just before coming back to start recording. On "Lost Faith," I was trying to write a guitar riff that mimics the church bells I constantly hear around my apartment in Berlin. It seems that every time I walk past this Catholic church, the bells ring. Now tuned, they ring every 15 minutes, but without fail, the second I walk on the edge of the general property, the bells start.
But as I said, the winter there is pretty dark, so I'm not surprised that it's a little more contemplative or reflective. "Lost Faith" talks about this person stuck in this really helpless place, but the choruses are so uplifting, but it falls even darker, then collapses and leaves you like, "What was it?
You keep talking about characters – do not you identify yourself personally with your songs?
Everything comes from me, so I will sign my name. Often, the characters are me and other people. From time to time, it's pure fiction.
What's a song that is fictional?
"What do you want me to do" is no longer a crazy idea. It's one of those things I'm struggling with now because I'm … I'm old enough. I have been doing this for a long time and the world in which I started was so different from the world we live in now. The juxtaposition of what was acceptable and admirable in terms of the behavior of musicians in the seventies compared to now is staggering. It's a little scary for me, because I grew up with a set of values totally different from the one that is present in the world, at least in my field. It's like I'm living in fear of this terrible quote, something that, in my opinion, would look like something I read in a Fleetwood Mac book. So this song is a fictional tribute to the crazy lifestyle of Seventies rock. It is about this insane madness that we used to read.
Well, if you want to confess everything or get ahead of stories, here is your chance.
[[[[Laughs]No, I'll take it one piece at a time.
You do not have Fleetwood Mac stories to haunt you?
Not in my rock career, no. These DJ nights, do not throw me … but still.
What inspired the song "The Final Years"? It's such a serious song.
Just a waste of time and people leaving too early in unforeseen circumstances. This is the idea that you should really try to make the most of it, no matter the situation. See my previous comments on age; the clock turns a little louder with each tick. I just really want to try to be present and grateful. The clock stops at some point.
Did you think of Grant Hart, who died last year, when you wrote one of those songs?
Of course. We all thought of Grant when we recorded the record. Jon was a big fan. Jason and Grant were also friends. So, you recognize the loss. You try to pay tribute to everything you've done, whether it's me with Hüsker Dü or these guys as fans. Of course, you think about these things.
Have you been able to forgive yourself with him towards the end?
Yeah.[[[[breaks]How to answer that? We sort of worked together on this Numero Group box for almost four years. We did not work side by side in the same room, but all the members of the group and the Minnesota lawyer who was doing everything worked together towards a common goal.
The word "fine" suggests more acrimony than there ever was. It's funny. To get back to that 70s thing – music and mythology – who do I say, "That's not the story? Here is the story. I had my story. "I think people did more bullying about perceived acrimony than there really was. So here is. It's mythology.
Of course the group never met.
Yes, and to my knowledge, he had never wanted to reunite the group. Although … you know.[[[[breaks]It would have been a difficult feat. I think my position throughout was that everything has its place in time and that everything is at one time. And what the group did in the '80s to try to reproduce or reproduce all the circumstances, the emotions or the environment that made it really difficult.
And I did not want to go back there. I can not speak for Grant, but I never saw him wanting to come back. We have never talked about coming back. But this last step was pretty good, quite productive and quite civil.
Will you pay tribute to Grant on your next tour?
We played "Never Talking To You Again" during the first shows immediately after his death. We have not really talked about it, but it is certainly not out of the question. We will talk about it when we start to repeat.
Looks like you had the closure.
Yeah.
What struck you when you listened to the Wild Youth box?
I've heard three kids trying to find a sound, attract attention and hopefully avoid getting real jobs. It is a very beautiful look on these first years before everyone notices it. This is the beauty of the career of any group: these years spent tinkering and living to the limit, to live in the group, to live in the basement of someone when we are not in tour and write songs constantly. Hüsker Dü was a band where it seemed like we still had an album in front of us. No matter how much we recorded, we always wrote and played well before entering the studio.
I think you lose that urgency and naivety once The voice of the village gives you two of the top 10 albums of the same year. You lose that kind of thing because everybody looks at you and all of a sudden it's like, "Oops." This is the first grain of sand that has entered the gas tank.
Is there anything left in the vaults you want to publish?
No, it cleaned up the value. I think there may be gigs but, to be honest, you have pretty much all the songs here. All subsequent elements – all B sides and similar elements – that have been exploited for other reissues in the past years. I think Rhino did a developed version of Everything falls apart that included a number of things. I do not remember anything we did that was unheard of at this point, except for the lives.
What is your favorite time of Hüsker Dü?
Return your wig. It was the first time Grant and I had the full range of our production, and we were on a roll. Everyone was absolutely on the same page. After that, the attention was drawn, then we signed for Warner Bros., then the frictions and the end. This was the best case. With Zen Arcade and New Day Risingwe were right in the middle. It was so furious and constant that we had not really been able to absorb much of it. We just put a lot. So, if we really had the studio to ourselves to create a record as we want it, I think it was the creative summit of the band – or the collaborative top, perhaps.
You have been playing with your current group for as long as Hüsker Dü is together. What has clicked with you three?
I think we all grew up in the same areas. These guys know my job pretty well. When I bring songs, they are all natural. It's like, "Oh, I got this one." And the fact that we make records and shoot together, and then make the rest of our separate lives is really special. It's not loaded with all the emotional content that a band would normally have. We are older. It's different. It's really fun.
Has life become easier for you in recent years? Looks like you found a groove.
No, but the change in Berlin has done a lot of good. I have just been able to have an interesting life there because I kind of went through it. I do not speak the language, so I do not necessarily understand everything that's going on around me, so I can enjoy it in a big way. I guess I have left the weather nice for some parts of the year, but all these new experiences only shape my vision of life. The irony is, for example, who moves to Berlin to write his happy record?
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