Stream: Bob Mould, ‘What Do You Want Me to Do’

Kevin Bronson on November 29th, 2018

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Bob Mould Band (Photo by Alicia J. Rose)

As news feeds bulge with screeds on the world’s latest calamities, leave it to Bob Mould to make an album rooted in … optimism? It’s true. The 58-year-old, who continues to cement his legacy alternative rock, will release “Sunshine Rock” on Feb. 8 via Merge Records.

And at a time artists can hardly be faulted for being angry and dark, Mould says he decided to “write to the sunshine.”

The album, his 13th solo release (adding to a catalog that includes six albums with Hüsker Dü in the 1980s and three with Sugar in the ’90s), is the fourth since the publication of his autobiography “See a Little Light” in 2011 and the first since “Patch the Sky” in 2016. He found creative spark in his new home of Berlin, where he has spent much of the past three years.

“Almost four years ago, I made plans for an extended break,” he says. “I started spending time in Berlin in 2015, found an apartment in 2016, and became a resident in 2017. My time in Berlin has been a life-changing experience.”

“To go from ‘See a Little Light’ to the last three albums, two of which were informed by loss of each parent, respectively, at some point I had to put a Post-It note on my work station and say, ‘Try to think about good things.’ Otherwise I could really go down a long, dark hole. I’m trying to keep things brighter these days as a way to stay alive.”

The noisy (even for him) second single is “What Do You Want Me To Do” — which Mould calls “a quick take on shaky relationships, coincidental debauchery, and the emptiness that typically follows such follies.” It follows last month’s release of the title track.

||| Stream: “What Do You Want Me to Do” and “Sunshine Rock”