Tuesday, November 14, 2017

It's been a while, for sure -- Bob Mould - Patch the Sky (2016)

So I went on a long streak of posts quite a long time ago... and got burned out.  I didn't get burned out on music; I did get burned out on consuming it, and then spitting out content.  Half of the time I was going back and reading my own reviews to recall what I thought about albums, which was not ideal.

Therefore, I cut way back.  I went back and listened to old stuff, checked out some new stuff leisurely, and kept honing the latest and greatest of the $15 Songs CDs.

However, over the two years, two new (well, at the time, new) albums stuck with me... I played them over and over again for a good year.  

Because of that, I'm going to tell you about them.  They are from two of my favorite bands, and both are stellar additions to their catalogs.

The first is from Bob Mould (well, duh) and his 2016 album, Patch the Sky. (The other will be my next blog post.) 

As context, in 2012, Mould released Silver Age.  I wrote about it then, but here is the synopsis:  
In short, it's the most focused and consistent work Mould has done since 1993, and his best album since 1995.  It's great for longtime fans who've waited for the "next great Bob record" and for general rock fans who want something new to check out.
Now at the time, I believed I had gotten the last great Bob Mould album.  It's not like he's been producing crap all these years; he just plays at another level, and this hit that level.

Then, in 2014, he released Beauty and Ruin.  If Silver Age is a singles album, B&R is more a concept album from front to back.  And much to my shock:  I liked it as much or even better than Silver Age.  Reasons?  There were a few:  different verse structures than he typically uses, an elevated lyrical vocabulary, and nods to the past on almost every song (which I am more than happy to detail if anyone cares).  Every song points to his older work without ever repeating it.

The way he described the album was that it was created as a number of three-song "packets," moving from a brooding, dark beginning to a much shinier end.  And that works.

Song highlights from this album for me:  "Little Glass Pill," "I Don't Know You Anymore," and "The War."  But honestly, the whole album is great.

One thing that is a hallmark of Mould's albums are his fantastic opening and closing songs.  Now, "Low Season" (the opener) is my least favorite song on the album, but it serves a purpose for the "concept" part of the album to set the initial mood and tone.  As for closers, I count four in a row that easily could the final song:  "Fire in the City" (melodic poppy closer), "Tomorrow Morning" (punk closer), "Let the Beauty Be," (slower melodic, uplifting, introspective closer), and "Fix It" (pop punk closer, and the actual final song on the album).  All four are excellent songs, and any qualify under the high standard of his closing songs.  (So if you're keeping track, that's seven favorite songs on the album.)

I'd say more, but we still have to get to the album that I am actually reviewing.  Let's just call it "stellar" and move on.

In 2016, Mould announced that he had completed the third in the "trilogy" of albums with Patch the Sky.  Based on my reviews of the first two parts of the trilogy, you can imagine that I was pretty excited for this album.


Bob Mould -- "The End of Things" (live on Colbert) 

This album is as close to a "dirge" as we have seen from Mould since 1990's Black Sheets of Rain.  It's a beautiful poppy slog.  Perhaps not coincidentally, Patch the Sky hits on a lot of the same emotional themes of BSOR:  love and loss, wistfulness and sentiment.  But above all, it definitely has the biggest political slant of any album since BSOR.  

Once again, great songs abound here, but my favorites are "The End of Things," "You Say You," "Black Confetti," and (last song on the album, of course) "Monument," the latter of which is the only song on all three albums clocking in at over five minutes (5:31).  "Daddy's Favorite" also really opened up to me on the headphones listen.  But there isn't a bad one in the pack.

Bob Mould -- "You Say You" (live in London 10/12/16) 


Mould's willingness to break structure and his typical tendencies on a song like "Losing Sleep" -- and, more importantly, to pull it off successfully -- shows that he is completely on top of his game, and has created a production environment to smoothly execute an experiment like this without any clumsiness.  And, despite being such a departure from the rest of the album, the song also somehow fits easily into the musical structure of the album in a way I can't quite explain... except that it just does.  

So is it great?  It is.  In the end, Patch the Sky is a perfect compliment to the other two albums, being both in the same vein and yet completely different.  Intellectually it works too:  coherently addressing love, politics, insecurities, and religion, in a way the other ones don't quite do.

Now to the bigger question:  which is my favorite of the three?  Most of the time it's Beauty & Ruin, but some days it's Patch the Sky.  And even on occasion it still is Silver Age.  In the end... this is not a bad dilemma to have.  

Bottom line:  this is Mould's best multi-album stretch since he followed up his first two solo albums (Workbook and BSOR) with his first album and EP with Sugar (Copper Blue and Beaster).  Yes, these albums are not quite at that level, but recognize a huge compliment when I give one:  damn if this is not a return to form.  I recommend you go out and check all three yourselves.

CD Placement Rating: clearly all three belong in the Car iPod.  Just awesome.

- Snilch