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Mar 13, 2025 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

Since breaking out of Hüsker Dü in the late 1980s, Bob Mould has built a legendary solo career out of melding pop smarts with guitar, bass, and drums heft. And though his output in the late ’90s and through the first decade of the new millennium found him branching out and pushing boundaries, his work since the 2010s has evidenced a certain settling in, a perfecting of the archetype he alone created.

Here We Go Crazy, Mould’s 15th solo album, supported by longtime bandmates Jon Wurster (drums) and Jason Narducy (bass), showcases the same strengths that he has spent a lifetime mastering, and as such, the album’s 11 songs are a bit over a half hour of some of the most melodically bracing, punchy songs of his career. Mould sat down with Under the Radar to discuss his new album, how he views his musical output these days, and why, despite his storied history, he’s not much of one for looking back.

Frank Valish (Under the Radar): I wanted to start off very generally, to ask when you started writing these tunes and how long it took to come together. Is doing this pretty easy for you at this point?

Bob Mould: Oh, no, it gets a little harder each year. The first song out of these was “Breathing Room” in maybe summer of 2020, during my two years of unemployment. Then I think the next couple that made the record would have been “Hard to Get” and “When Your Heart Is Broken,” which is probably why they all fit together in a nice pack on the record, because they were written in the same general spirit and time frame. 2020 and 2021 were tough. I was writing, but I wasn’t sure of the work that I was doing. I’ll give you a quick explanation of how I know this. I measure my life in albums. And every album is a cycle of my life. The cycle begins when I’m gathering up all my loose ideas and notes and I sit down to write a record. Then I go in the studio and I record the record. Then there’s those awkward months in between finishing it and when it comes out. And then it comes out, and I go on tour. The last part of that cycle is really important to me, because that’s when I get to see the results of the work. I can count on the crowd to let me know if the work was good or not, because I can see them responding to it. I didn’t have that for two years, so it was a little confusing to me as to what I was doing and whether it was good. The beginning of 2022, when things loosened up, I started what ended up being almost three years of solo, electric touring. So to take those songs out in front of people and hold them up against the songbook songs, I was like, Yeah, this is the right direction—short, simple, direct guitar pop songs. People hadn’t heard these songs, so they didn’t know these songs as recorded songs with a band. I had to get the song over to people through just voice and guitar. And that set me on course to continue writing in that direction. Very economical. Simple stuff.

You talked about 2020 and 2021 when you were kind of holed up. Is there a lot of self questioning about the art you’re producing during the time when you don’t have the opportunity to bounce it off people?

I don’t think those two years were kind to any of us. I had plenty of things to do during that time. Despite being unemployed in terms of being a working musician, I was still doing press for Blue Hearts. There was a gigantic project ongoing, that being the Demon Records 30-year retrospective box sets. All of that was hours a day of working, by Skype with Demon production people in the UK, putting those packages together. That took a half a day for three months. So it wasn’t like I was sitting around with a big bowl of big bowl of Valium. I was working a lot, but it was different.

It’s a little surprising for me to hear that there is still some of that questioning. I always kind of assume that, at least for someone of your standing and stature, that it would be, “This is what I’m doing and audience be damned,” so to speak.

You know, I’ve been difficult in the past. And after two years of nothing, to get back out and just get sort of back to basics, very simple. I was very grateful. And also in the solo electric shows, getting to spend time at the end of the night with people who hang around at the end of the night. My my work days on a solo tour is, I wake up in a town, I go have coffee, I drive x hours, I get to the next place, I show up with a guitar, there’s an amp there waiting for me, I show up with merch, I go and I sound check, I count in the merch, I stretch out, I do the show, and at the end of the night, I count out the merch. So I go up to the table, and there’s people waiting. And then we have fun. We talk. I sign stuff, I do selfies. And people share their stories with me. It’s super cool and I’m very grateful that the people do that. As far as uncertainties and stuff like that, I don’t know. This is a weird thing that we do. I don’t ever feel certain of a body of work like that. With this record, I was certain about some songs. I was pretty certain when I found the tent pole. I was pretty certain when I put the four stakes in the ground around the corners, but you never really know if it’s the right fabric or if the wind is going to knock it down, stuff like that. That’s the process. Just because I’ve been doing this my entire life, basically, no, there’s no certainty. When I write a really great song in a hot minute, and I can’t get it out of my head for a week, I’m pretty certain of that song. But all of it? It’s like, “We’re gonna get this tent built before the storm comes.”

You mentioned those box sets. I wonder whether creating new music after doing it for so long comes with looking back. I imagine doing those box sets had to come with a lot of looking back. But when you go in to create a new record, is it imbued with the weight of everything that came before it?

Yeah, I mean, there’s always history. How it gets into a record? Well, I mean, again, 2022, ’23 ’24, playing new stuff alongside catalog stuff, I’m sort of addressing all of it together. It’s like, “Here’s all the work I’ve done that you know, and here’s this new work that bears resemblance to the work that you like.” In a way, this record is definitely the least contrary record I’ve made in a while. Modulate [from 2002] was very contrary. Hubcap [the Bob Mould self-titled album from 1996] was pretty contrary. Those stand out as being really more of a challenge. Because they came in a different form than people maybe were used to.

Is it that the history changes as as you change, so the songs mean different things…

Oh, I know what it was. You were asking about the box sets. It just took me a minute to get back to where where you were. I’ve never really been a big rear view mirror guy. I’ve only really had to do it two times. One was the three years working on the autobiography. That was, not difficult, but that was a lot of work for me. To go back and construct a book made of a series of threads that were consistent through my life to the point where, at 48 it’s like, Sit down and take all these threads and weave them together and write a book. That was a different way of storytelling for me, because I tell stories in three minutes, not in 140,000 words. So that was a lot of looking back. And the second time would be these box sets, and that wasn’t as heavy of a lift, because it was just the recorded work. I didn’t need to question my history, because I was pretty certain of most of the history having having written the book 10 years prior. You know, I did a fair amount of orchestrated reinvention inside the box, redoing all the album covers and giving everything a unified look and feel inside of 30 years, which was like a different set of clothes for the same person.

Yeah, and with the whole looking back thing, I don’t know. I’ve gotten myself off track myself here. So I’m gonna move on.

How about this? Always keep your dreams bigger than your memories. We’ll stop right there haha.

Looking back is not always comfortable for me as as a person, but I can choose not to. I wonder how when you create, even when you create new music, it’s always an extension of something. When you’re going out on tour, you’re always revisiting. Does one have to compartmentalize to a certain degree to kind of make doing that manageable, emotionally speaking?

Well, that’s a couple different things at once. The first one, when I’m writing, especially with this record, it’s like, architecture. I have built a lot of things over time with my work. And I know the blueprints, right? I did the schematics, so I know how it was built. Some things have been sturdier than others. I know my work. I know how I put my work together. As I get older, I always carry that idea, like “Oh, I’m supposed to be challenging myself. I’m supposed to be making this difficult. I’m supposed to be feeling that in my 60s I’m still growing” or, you know, these sort of mythological, late-era artist conundrums. And I guess with this record I was just like, “I got these blueprints that I know are really sturdy, so I’m gonna probably end up using these, and those are blueprints that everybody loves, right?” I know they do, and I like them because they’re pretty familiar. And I did that. I built that specific blueprint from things I learned as a child or things I learned very early on, writing songs. So is familiar the same as lazy is the same as give the people what they want? Is this is just sort of where I landed instinctively? Because it’s all of that.

That was something I was thinking a lot about at after reading some of your quotes from the bio about not overcomplicating things, and all the things you’re talking about now, especially in light of a career where there there has a lot of times been a lot of experimentation. So I guess I’m wondering too whether you are feeling less inclined these days to to experiment with music, or whether you’re perhaps more comfortable with being comfortable with what you do.

I’m real comfortable with what I do. As far as the challenge of it. I mean, you know, ’20 and ’21 I was messing around with stuff. It was outside of the tight wheelhouse, and it was just like a) I didn’t have any feedback, and b) I wasn’t waking up the next day going, “Man, what an homage to Harry Partch I created yesterday for 38 seconds!” Sometimes it’s like, just do the work that’s in front of you. And write a song. I like writing songs that get stuck in my head. That’s my favorite thing to do, because the mechanics of it is, I get a thought in my head, I shape it into something, and then I put it in your head, and then you can’t forget it. That’s the success. It’s not the Why is he messing with the oversized goblets again? Why is he hitting that piece of driftwood again? You know, those are beautiful things. But right this moment, I was like, “Yeah, write some pop songs because it makes me feel good, and I’m good at it, and people like it.”

Has what music means to you changed over the years?

The essence of it, no. The mechanics of it, and the having to decipher it, like I am right now? I mean, that’s where I guess I figure out, that’s where I learn more about what I’m doing. Because honestly, when it’s happening, you’re just doing it. Later, when I have to defend it or explain it, then I have to think about it, because people ask me stuff about it. If it was just for me, I would never think about it. But I sort of know that there’s an end user, and the interface needs to be familiar, and that usually gets the best results. But I don’t know. It’s a weird thing. I try not to think about it too much.

Have you ever been inclined to do what has seemed to become more commonplace these days, going back to do a tour of an album in its entirety, like play Workbook or Black Sheets of Rain front to back, or get Sugar back together, or do any of that sort of stuff?

In 2014, after the Silver Age stuff wrapped up, there was a Workbook 25 reissue, before Beauty and Ruin, and I went out and played a bunch of shows and did the album. I mean, that’s a great thing to do. It serves a lot of masters at once. It’s good for the crowd. It can be good for the artist. It can be good for business. But again, I’m not the biggest guy on looking back. I would hope that I would really feel something, feel like that’s what I want to do. Instead of, you know, sort of looking at, “Did that come out 25 years ago? Did that come out 30 years ago? Did that come out 10 years ago? Is there an angle here?” It’s valid, no matter what way you cut it. But again, I’m not the biggest look back guy.

The set lists have have remained relatively similar, it seems.

Uh huh.

Does going through those same tunes again and again get stale for you?

No. I mean the A List is the A List. It’s hard to avoid those songs, because I know the audience pretty well, and I know how to put a set together for people. There’s a way to do it that is pretty tried and true, and people really like it. I’m looking at putting sets together for the run that’s coming up in April, and trying to shake it up, and just change the framework of it a bit, without reinventing the way I put it together. I like those songs. They’re comfortable to play. People like them. With this tour coming up, there’s 30 minutes of new stuff to put in. So as the architect, the the trick is how to keep the framework intact when I’m swapping out new parts. That’s pretty much what I’m doing when I’m not doing interviews right now, just looking at the blueprints and moving stuff around, trying to figure out what’s going to be good for the band to play, what’s going to make the crowd happy, what is physically feasible. I think if I tried to play side two of Zen Arcade, start to finish every night, I’d be dead. You know, there’s some considerations like that.

I did want to ask about one specific song. I was hoping you could talk a little about “Your Side.” I love the idea of a song from or about someone who is older, looking back, perhaps with different priorities, or certainly a different viewpoint. But I feel like I don’t see that a lot. I wondered whether, kind of, I’m conceptualizing what you did there correctly, and whether then writing that song was different for you in a way,

Yeah, a little bit. I mean at the storytelling level that you just laid out, it’s pretty spot on. The first verse came quick. First bridge was empty. Second verse same as the first, but with more detail. And then we just go, and then it’s just home runs after that. It’s the epilogue. So it’s me trying to send everybody home happy. It’s a good little song. I like the end of it. It’s so 1981 am radio, New Wave, in stark contrast to Land Speed Record. I like writing anthems. I mean, who doesn’t like “Surrender?” Who doesn’t like “Do Ya?” Good grief.

www.bobmould.com

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