Bob Mould Blue Hearts LP

Legendary singer-songwriter-guitarist-bandleader Bob Mould has announced the release of an explosive new album, Blue Hearts.

In the winter of 2019, Bob Mould bucked the era's despair with his most melodic, upbeat album in ages, Sunshine Rock. Cut to spring of 2020, and he has this to say: "We're really in deep shit now." That sentiment informs the new full-length album, Blue Hearts, the raging-but-catchy yin to Sunshine Rock's yang.

Blue Hearts is perhaps the most directly confrontational work of Bob Mould's four-decade career, a raging 14-track collection described by its creator as "the catchiest batch of protest songs I've ever written in one sitting."

Recorded at the famed Electrical Audio in Chicago with longtime collaborator Beau Sorenson engineering and Mould producing, Blue Hearts - which once again features backing from the crack rhythm section of drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy - nods to Mould's past while remaining firmly planted in the issues of the day.

The acoustic opener, "Heart on My Sleeve" catalogues the ravages of climate change, while "American Crisis" - written initially for Sunshine Rock but deemed "too heavy" by its writer - spits plainspoken fire at the people who fomented this catastrophic moment in history. Elsewhere, the political and personal collide on songs like "Everyth!ng to You", "The Ocean" and the salaciously autobiographical "Leather Dreams", the latter two composed earlier this year during an epic three-day writing binge prior to January 2020's sold-out Solo Electric tour.

As volatile, hook-laden, and aggressively honest as anything in Mould's remarkable canon, Blue Hearts is fueled by a pervasive sense of déjà vu, its angry anthems of today equally informed by his experiences and memories of the early 1980s.

You'll likely need to adjust your volume knob accordingly to find the threshold of acceptable distortion, but make no mistake - Mould's rage is as melodic as it is primeval. After 35 minutes of tumult, Mould's manifesto is painfully obvious: Clear eyes, Blue Hearts, can't lose.