Last year, late in the evening of September 21, still “soaking wet” from a typically committed solo show at a local “honky tonk” bar, Bob Mould could be seen slaloming around groups of Saturday night revellers crowding the streets of Urbana, Illinois, with his guitar slung over one shoulder.
He was heading for the city’s chic Gallery Art Bar, and upon reaching his destination, he rapped loudly on the venue’s back doors, and told the bemused security staff: “I’m doing a song with the headline act.”
Mould hadn’t previously met any of the members of Militarie Gun, but – having been turned on to the Los Angeles quintet’s 2023 debut album Life Under The Gun by his husband Don Fisher – he’d been talking up their merits to friends for the best part of a year. When he heard that one of his musical heroes was a fan of his band, Militarie Gun frontman Ian Shelton got in touch and they hatched a plan to perform Hüsker Dü classic Makes No Sense At All together.
“It was hilarious because I had no idea what I was about to walk into,” Mould says. “But I just said, Fuck it! Their drummer counts us in - ‘1,2,3…’ - and I’m like, ‘that’s the right speed’, and we just went for it. They have a much younger audience, who were very probably thinking, ‘Who’s this old guy?’, but then 30 seconds later they were like, ‘Holy shit!’
“Three minutes later I was back out the door, and those guys were chasing me down for selfies. It was completely nutty.”
Shelton later enthused on Instagram, thanking Mould for “the honour”. Mould replied with a line befitting a true punk rock lifer: “All in a day’s work.”
It’s a story which neatly sums up Mould’s impact on alternative music. A true cult icon, his music helped reimagine the possibilities of punk rock and shaped American alt-rock’s blueprint in the process. He first did this with Hüsker Dü, the Minneapolis punk band where he was joined by the late Grant Hart and bassist Greg Norton, whose influences stretched far beyond punk rock orthodoxy. “I think our roots are more found in ‘60s pop music. The Beatles, The Who, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Mamas and Papas,” he told reporters on the band's first trip to London. The result was a run of records, from 1984’s Zen Arcade to 1987’s Warehouse: Songs And Stories, which influenced an entire generation of bands from Nirvana and Pixies, to Green Day, Weezer, The Wildhearts, Therapy? and beyond. He was dubbed “an American hero” by Foo Fighters main man Dave Grohl, and if you’re not familiar with his back catalogue, there’s a good chance your favourite artist is.
But the story also highlights his slight reluctance to be anything other than a cult hero. By his own admission, Mould has been a somewhat unwilling cultural icon, with very little interest in chasing anything other than what felt good to him. A career? Stardom? Nah. Keep it. “I’ve traditionally been a little bit contrary,” he admits. “Like, I knew that my electronic direction in the early 2000s [as heard on 2002’s Modulate album] was going to be a challenge”.
But now, some 20-odd years later, that urge to subvert and challenge his audience has subsided somewhat. He just wants to get on with the business of writing great songs he knows his fanbase will love. The result is his Here We Go Crazy, Mould’s 15th solo album, and a record the 64-year-old singer/songwriter modestly describes as “a collection of simple songs… really straightforward… very relatable”.
He’s downplaying it, obviously. ‘Simple’ isn’t ever really going to be an accurate description of Mould’s style. In even the most seemingly straight-forward of his songs, you’ll find his knack for deft songwriting and melody. Recorded at the late Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago with his longtime rhythm section of bassist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster, Here We Go Crazy is an album which uncomplicatedly highlights all the things he’s brilliant at. If you’re a fan of his craft, whether as a solo artist, or further back with the exceptional Hüsker Dü or Sugar, the eleven songs which make up Here We Go Crazy will give you plenty to enjoy. Bob Mould doesn’t do crowd-pleasers, of course. But if he did? This album would be pretty close.
“If I was ever going to say that any of my records was giving people what they want, this is pretty close to that,” he admits. “There's no gigantic growth happening here. I could have tried to write a new encyclopedia of music but, knowing what I’m good at, and faced with what’s happening in America today – and in the world – I think this is the right record for now.
“It talks a lot about uncertainty, and it goes to some dark places, but by the end, I think it offers hope, and that’s something we could all use at this time.”
Mould tells us that Here We Go Crazy has “a number of contrasting themes: control and chaos, hyper-vigilance and helplessness, uncertainty and unconditional love.” And though it’s an album every bit as powerful, and focussed, and strong, as any in his back catalogue – and uses the same particularly orange President as its source material – Here We Go Crazy is a markedly different record, tonally, from its 2020 predecessor Blue Hearts.
A furious, righteous response to Donald Trump’s first presidency, that album found Mould singing like his head was on fire, not least on its lead single American Crisis, with its lyrical references to a “fucked up USA” and a “world turning darker every day”. It saw the veteran songwriter drawing comparisons between Trump’s reign and the evangelical right’s endorsement of Ronald Reagan’s two-term presidency in the 1980s, with Mould spitting “I never thought I'd see this bullshit again.”
“Blue Hearts was written as this dire warning, but it’ll be a crazy celebration if we make it to the other side,” he told British broadsheet newspaper The Guardian while promoting the record ahead of the 2020 presidential election. “I’m looking forward to the party.”
That party is well and truly over, and the hangover is kicking in hard. Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden five years ago did not mark the end of his political career, and now the convicted felon and twice impeached business tycoon-turned-authoritarian politician is back in the Oval Office, emboldened and vengeful, making good on his stated promises to roll back progressive legislation for the most vulnerable, and taking a belligerent ‘America First’ approach to global politics.
“When I woke up on the day after the election, and saw the votes were in, it was a pretty sad day for America,” says Mould. “And I'm sure that that sadness is being felt in most of the world. But I guess I'm not terribly surprised that Trump has turned to the world's richest man [Elon Musk] to try to undo the US government, similar to the way that the world's richest man bought, then undid, a social media platform [Twitter].
“But I think a lot of people in America are regretting their vote,” he says. “People who voted for Trump are now all of a sudden, like, ‘Wait a minute, eggs are twice as expensive?’ There might be people thinking about a coup any moment, because, you know, everybody likes eggs for breakfast, and now they can't afford them.”
This might sound like a flippant, even trivial, observation, but it cuts to the core of what Bob Mould is saying throughout Here We Go Crazy. An album which was purposefully announced on Trump’s inauguration day, if Blue Hearts was all about rage and defiance, this record puts forward an argument for taking comfort, solace and joy in simple pleasures, endorsing self-care and small victories, and celebrating love in the face of tyranny and turmoil. Where Blue Hearts was protest record, Here We Go Crazy is more of a survival manual, offering guidance to help steer troubled souls through these darkening days.
“Everybody has to keep as much hope as they can keep,” he says. “And some ways of doing that are to take care of ourselves – our mental health, our physical health, our emotional health – taking care of the people we love, and staying engaged with our neighbours and our communities.
“There’s moments in the record where all of that gets addressed. I’m just trying to remind people that there's only so much you can do: life is short and we need to try to enjoy it, and protect the people and the things that we love. That’s the goal right now… And then get out in the fucking streets and protest when needed. That time will come again.”
Mould is no stranger to the ways of insecure, violent bullies. In his searingly truthful autobiography See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, written in collaboration with the great American music writer Michael Azerrad, the musician offered an unflinching look at his dysfunctional upbringing, and the regular abuse that he, his mother and his siblings suffered at the hands of his father Bill.
Back then, as now, music would provide a refuge for Mould. His father would buy singles discarded from jukeboxes for a cent, and as a “broken little kid”, songs such as The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever and The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations would drown out the domestic chaos in Mould’s life for three minutes at a time. It’s a dark and painful chapter that Mould revisits on recent single Neanderthal (“I was the golden child with all the brains / I was so wild and too hard to contain”), the album’s fiercest moment.
“It's pretty autobiographical, a real fight or flight song,” he says. “I think anybody raised in a chaotic environment can identify with that idea of just trying to find something to hold on to. Music has always been that for me, and I’m pretty grateful if my work can serve that same purpose for anybody.”
Asked if he’s surprised at how well-adjusted he is now, given how scared he must have been as a little boy, Mould offers a thoughtful answer. “I think fear gets replaced by a sense that this is normal,” he says. “Anyone who grows up in a tough household, that abuse becomes predictable, almost scheduled. The fear happens the first few times it occurs, and it goes through your whole body, but while you don’t get immune to it, me personally, I came to expect it. It was like, ‘Oh, it’s that time of the week, this will start, and it’ll last for this long, and go away.’ That was my childhood, like clockwork. Fear is a strong word – it isn’t something you have every day for decades.”
By the age of nine, the young Bob Mould was writing songs. The title of his very first composition - Let Me Live Today - could come straight off Here We Go Crazy, though rather than being a plea for living one’s most authentic life, the song was actually an ode to his dog, Tipper. But after moving to St. Paul, Minnesota to attend college on a scholarship for underprivileged kids, the teenage Bob Mould found community and liberation in Minneapolis’ punk rock scene. The rest, as they say, is history.
In 2025, Mould seems content, grateful and secure about his standing in the modern rock community, not least because of insights gained when the global Covid pandemic forced him off the road for the most sustained period of his adult life.
“I do these solo electric tours, and it’s just me in a rental car, with my guitar and my suitcase and my merch, and I get to connect face-to-face with my real core fans,” he says. “And they tell me their stories, and I can see, Okay, so you came in at [1989’s] Workbook, you came in at [Sugar’s] Beaster, you came in at [2012’s] Silver Age, you came in at [Hüsker Dü’s] Metal Circus, and they tell me their favourite songs. And while what a music critic would say about the work is valuable in maybe a more scholarly way, to hear what people who have been following me for decades think about new material is really helpful, and it means a lot to me, and really helped inform what became Here We Go Crazy.
“Life is fucking difficult, and things can change real quick,” he muses. “And so, with a song like You Need To Shine on the new record, it’s saying hold on tight, because we go through so much, alone, together, and as a community.
“Despite my chequered history, I've had a charmed and blessed life, and if my songs can make you feel like you have somebody by your side in the dark hours, that’s an honour that I don’t ever treat lightly.”
Here We Go Crazy is released on March 7 via Granary Music/BMG. Head to the Louder store to check out an exclusive Bob Mould Coffee Cup t-shirt, designed with Bob and only available via the Louder store.
