Patch the Sky

Patch the Sky is something of a darker twin to the 2014 "Beauty and Ruin," itself an album filled with grief and reckoning. But the music, in contrast to the often bleak, edge-of-despair lyrics, is cleansing.

It’s fair to wonder how many more runs through the alternative-rock mill one guy will get, but if Patch The Sky is any indication, Mould’s still a long way away from being on the clock.

A lot of these songs address loneliness, despair, and relationships ending, which gives Patch the Sky an extra slug to the gut. It’s not as depressing as it sounds--lyrics take a backseat to the group’s joyful noise, after all--and the good news is Mould has found a silver lining in his music

The album gains strength as it goes on, getting harder and more abrasive in its second half. And yet even as it rages, it has an elegiac tone.

It's good to know that, like you and me, he's swimming hard against the ever increasing tide of shit and still, in the main, coming up smelling of roses and refusing to back down.

On most of Patch The Sky, Mould expresses his darkest emotions in way that make you want to shout along. [Jun 2016, p.114]

Patch The Sky is certainly a difficult listen but it’s not without a odd kind of sweetness--it’s full of grief and bleakness to be sure, but there’s also an exhilarating sense of catharsis to be had.

Patch the Sky is undoubtedly the record of someone not only haunted by their past but also the continuing difficulties faced in the present, but it is also a stunning example of Bob Mould’s resolve and ability to channel life, death, love and failure into two sides of meaningful and melodic music.

He’s on a full-on conversationalist binge on Sky, though it’ll demand your extra attention since the album’s turbulent production tends to obscure most of his learned reflections. In spite of this, it wouldn’t be a true Mould record if it didn’t hit you with that pummeling, noisy sheen.

Arguably the darkest of the Merge albums thus far, Patch the Sky is a consuming album of blazing chords, heavenly melody and personal torment. No-one does intelligent, meaningful rock like Bob Mould.

Teetering between the crisp production and outright aggression that marked Mould’s short tenure fronting Sugar, Narducy and Wurster push Mould ever closer to coming unhinged on Patch the Sky.

All this adds up to another midlife triumph from Mould, a record that harks back to his past while completely occupying the present moment, no matter how uncomfortable or painful that may be.

Patch the Sky might not be saying much, but Mould’s putting his all into saying it.

Just a classic power trio lineup in the spirit of Midwest post-punk juggernaut Husker Du and its barely-sweetened antecedent Sugar, with Bob Mould conjuring the ecstatic rage of his earlier bands for a grim new era, apparently still convinced that the best way to meet crushing hopelessness is by barreling head first through it with a throat-shredding howl and all amps cranked.

Patch The Sky continues a creative roll that's rarely slowed. [26 Mar 2016, p.52]

Following the creative upswing of 2012's Silver Age and 2014's Beauty & Ruin, this is definitive work. [Apr 2016, p.87]

No other pony does his one trick half as well. [Apr 2016, p.76]

It’s the contrast of sparkling melodic effervescence and Mould’s obsidian soul that drives the tracks on Patch The Sky. Here, Mould has turned up the contrast between anger and melody, and found some sense of enlightenment.

Direct, honest and powerful, Patch The Sky can only win you over, slowly but surely.

Results including "Lucifer and God" and instant classic "The End of Things" equal Mould's most melodically explosive punk rock since his Eighties heyday in Minneapolis, all abrasive guitar work and barbed lyricism candy-coated by tunefulness.

Other than on the lighter, keyboard-accented, "Losing Sleep," the pace doesn't let up at all here. Another highlight here is the absolutely scorching "Hands Are Tied," which convincingly approaches early Hüsker Dü levels of speed and distortion. At well over 50, Mould hasn't lost a step.

In this latest chapter of his career, Mould has turned his music into a personal reflecting pool, a watery blank canvas into which he expertly casts the stones of his regrets and longings. Just don’t plan on booking your birthday party there.

The songs here aren't necessarily breaking new ground stylistically, but that really isn't what matters. At this point, Mould clearly has nothing left to prove.