We asked June MAGNET cover star Bob Mould to go through Beauty & Ruin (Merge), his extraordinary new album, track by track and free associate in any way he saw fit. What’s it about? What inspired it? How was it recorded? That kind of thing. Here’s what he had to say:
LOW SEASON
The atmospheric thing at the beginning is actually a recording of these big ropes flapping against a big flagpole down by the ocean. Did some treatments to it—tried to make it sound almost like an orchestra, tuning up, doing all these manipulations. It goes into this really ponderous, very simply, heavy riff. It’s the low season, turn the sunlight down. Obviously, it’s about loss, about passing. It’s very monochromatic and dirge-y until the bridge and you hear the organ hit, and all of the sudden it goes technicolor.
LITTLE GLASS PILL
It’s about the smartphone as unintended tool of self-realization. A glass pill, that’s what that is—it’s a window, it’s a mirror. You see your reflection when you look at the thing. We’ve become this world we we look at ourselves through this thing; it’s hilarious.
I DON’T KNOW YOU ANYMORE
Straight-up pop song. You know, I’ve been writing that song for a long time—always good—catchy, catchy catchy. Always put a negative in the title—“I Don’t Know You Anymore”—then make it a very upbeat.
KID WITH THE CROOKED FACE
Straight-up punk rock, very autobiographical in a funny way. It’s got severe imagery inside the lyrics, but it’s not actually that bad. I hadn’t written a punk-rock song like that in a while, and it was so easy, like I might’ve done it before.
NEMESIS ARE LAUGHING
Deep, deep track. Love that track—very psychedelic—a lot of thos late-’60s psych/pop chord changes in it. Lot of weird dissonant, angular parts that I think people picked up on and the stuff I was touching on with “Slick” from Copper Blue. I saw people taking that style in the aughts, a lot of angular rock bands using that. So, yeah, “Nemesis”: real, real fun one.
THE WAR
Side one ends with a war. And, yes, I still think in terms of side-a and side-b. A collection of snapshots. A unified statement. As long as there are still people who buy albums, I will continue to make them.
FORGIVENESS
End of side one, the war is over, and now we’re into forgiveness. We’re into the third act of the record, you know, you’ve gone through decline, you’ve gone through flashback, now you’ve come to conciliation, you know, the next phase of whatever life is, where you not so much make peace with others but make peace with who you are. Again that life, loss and legacy thing and where that takes you. It starts with Jon Wurster’s nice little drumbeat and sets up a very simple, plaintive story : better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.
HEY MR. GREY
Really funny song. It’s so hilarious. You have the whole “I am Mr. Grey, get off my lawn” thing. Little Replacements mention, and then on with the colors. The blue broken-hearted fool; the green swirly scene, envy, color of envy; Mr. White, the one percenter; and then back to Mr. Grey. And in the end line, “Find a life that’s right for you,” is sort of setting up song eight or 12, and it’s getting ready to set up the end of the record.
FIRE IN THE CITY
It’s sort of this earthquake/Armageddon/ascension/end-of-time kind of thing.
TOMORROW MORNING
This is the final stage of the record: the future. You know, after all these things happen, after you lose people, and you lose your health, you lose time, you reflect on all of that, you try and get right with it, and then all you’re left with at the end of all that is the future. For better or worse, that’s what we all get.
LET THE BEAUTY BE
It’s technically the closer of the album. You’ve seen the artwork: the gray, the yellow, the fog, the sun, the death. It’s the rebirth, it’s the study in contrast.
FIX IT
We had the music recorded, but I was banging my head trying to get the words finished up. And I was like, “What do I do, what do I do?” But then I was, like, “This is the epilogue. The album’s actually over, this is the epilogue.” So, let me do this, let me go back and let me look at all the key themes and all the key words in the album: The magic, which we lost in “Low Season,” the depression, the cancer of the soul that we talked about in “Nemeses.” I yell into a paper cone, pounding on a piece of wood and wires. What does that mean? That’s what I do. Microphone’s a paper cone, guitars, it’s a piece of wood with wires, that’s all it is. That’s what I do. Scratch that, that’s what we do.
