Legendary Bob Mould returns to Eastern Iowa at Codfish Hollow Barnstormers

If Bob Mould has a super power, it’s his mastery of dynamics.

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Walking that fine line of balancing light and heavy in volume and presentation is something that’s been his jam dating back to his Hüsker Dü days. It continued through his time in the band Sugar. It’s also infused in the fine body of work he’s churned out in a solo career that kicked off with 1989’s seminal “Workbook.” There’s plenty more where that came from on Mould’s new album “Here We Go Crazy.”

“I think this new album is a continuation of the same style of work that I have done for many years — sort of the bright melodies and darker words,” he said. “This record is a little bit informed by stuff that started in 2020 for all of us. Isolation and a sort of uncertainty.”

As has been the case when he’s decided to go down a band path, Mould’s musical language of choice is power trio. He’s once again playing with bassist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster, a threesome that first joined forces on 2011’s “Silver Age.”

The current album’s origins date back to the pandemic, when Mould was grappling with songwriting at a time when the pause button on touring didn’t allow him to get the kind of feedback from an audience he was accustomed to getting in the past. That all changed once societal restraints loosened and allowed him to go on the road again.

“Once I was able to go out and do some solo touring, I started trying out some of the things I’d written and people responded well,” Mould said. “I think that helped me get back on the songwriting horse. When longtime songwriters start to get older, I think that there are all these expectations that you’re going to outdo your other work or reinvent the wheel. Or write ‘The Tenpenny Opera’ or whatever. I wasn’t really having any of that in my head.”

For Mould, those themes of isolation populate the front of the record and take the form of the frenetic “Neanderthal,” a nod to growing up in a violent household where he recalled “Heavy hands at the ready.” That betrayal continues in “Sharp Little Pieces” amid waves of hard-hitting chords that gild lines like “Young child full of inspiration, story never told/Deep bruise, one manipulation and they send you home.” Toward the end, a song like “You Need to Shine” was “… [Mould’s] attempt at trying to bring some sunlight to everything and trying to find a little bit of hope during interesting times in an interesting world.”

It all adds up to a batch of songs that Mould is only eager to explore in a live setting. He’s also eyeing taking a deeper dive into the work he’s done with Narducy and Wurster.

“I think the starting point for this tour is trying to showcase a lot of the new record,” Mould explained. “More generally, this feels like a really good time to look at our story as a three-piece and to look at the six records we’ve made together and really celebrate that which we created together as opposed to leaning really heavily into other projects I’ve done. That’s sort of a general vibe that we’re looking at. There are a lot of good songs on these records that we really haven’t dug into live. That’s how we’re going into it. Ask me more after about a week of the tour.”

With a hefty amount of touring on the horizon for most of 2025, Mould is content to “…work, work, work — get out and play, while the body allows.” Following a triumphant performance on “The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon” and the positive reviews he’s been getting for “Here We Go Crazy,” Mould has been able to feel some vindication following the uncertainty he had going into recording his latest effort.

“I was sort of trying to write in my comfort zone which again, music critics and such may look at and go, ‘Ugh,’” he said with a chuckle. “It’s funny now that the record is out, I’m seeing the reaction to it. People are finding a lot of comfort in it. I’m happy about that because I wasn’t so certain what I had done when I finished the record. But now it feels like I maybe did the right thing.”