I first “got” Copper Blue at a time when I could relate to what Bob Mould was singing about: heartache, sorrow, and deception; you know, what usually goes through your head when you are a certain way and love leaves your life. Every song had a line that could describe something I was feeling at the time — “The Act We Act” with all the words when we said goodbye and those we couldn’t bring out at the last moment, “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” and the desire to remain open to go back to the way things were, and once I started moving on, “Changes,” especially the part were that person becomes a stranger and we demand change to find someone to really call our own. Every song has something relatable in an emotional way, especially since most of have more than one narrator and some are not even about being unloved.
But it’s the arrangements and music that make this an extraordinary album. The whole band rocks along with weight and dexterity while Bob’s guitar expresses more than most lyricists can with a million words without radically changing his instrument’s sound, relying on his richly detailed playing style. The arrangements are adventurous without sacrificing verses and choruses to make the songs memorable while the melodies are simple, organic, and familiar, presented in an askew way to make them feel like this is something entirely new, not something from the mind of the guy from Hüsker Dü or any other band before. In fact, the whole album is constructed with common elements but are handled in such a way that you can’t imagine anybody else sounding like this.
Copper Blue is an album that can hit hard in your heart strings; you may feel excited because you’re listening to something fresh that already feels like home.