THE RIGHT MOULD

ALTERNATIVE ROCKER BOB MOULD RELEASES THE STUDIO ALBUM BLUE HEARTS, A SET CALLED DISTORTION: 19892019 — WHICH CHRONICLES MOULD’S SOLO MUSIC AND HIS WORK WITH THE BAND SUGAR — AND RECORD STORE DAY VINYL WITHIN A MONTH’S TIME.

- ALAN BROSTOFF

Let’s keep this intro short and sweet. One could easily look at Bob Mould’s body of work — Hüsker Dü, Sugar and lots of solo material — and say, ”Wow, what an amazing career!” But Mould is not a guy to rest on his laurels, so music fans are about to get a whole lot more of him this time of year. This being the case, Mould sat down with Goldmine to talk records, politics and why it’s such a critical time to get his message out.

GOLDMINE: I would like to propose that the last week of September and the first week of October be called “Bobtober” with all of the releases you have coming out — a brand new album, a Record Store Day release and an amazing box set. Was this intentional?

BOB MOULD: Yep. I know the Circle of Friends Record Store Day thing will be a nice release, but the two big ones, of course, are Blue Hearts and Distortion. I have been working on the Distortion box sets for, let’s say, four or five years. After releasing Sunshine Rock last year, and doing the touring and some of the cleanup, it seemed that I felt like I was going to be on break. I felt that 2020 was the right time to do the box. So, I really dig in. And then, around September of last summer, I realized that I was getting a bit of a trigger finger to make another record. I had been playing a lot of guitar; a lot of solo, electric shows in Europe. I had a couple of songs in my back pocket. I had “American Crisis,” which was originally recorded for