Voices In My Head – Bob Mould

One of my favourite singles of last year also evolved into my favourite present of last Christmas.

Voices In My Head the lead track off of Bob’s 2016 solo album Patch The Sky caught me really early in the year. I heard it driving home from a late night meeting in the dirty end of winter when everything felt wet and cold and like we’d never see the sun again.

It burst onto the radio about 11:58 and changed the course of that drive from bleak and tired to energised and happy.

I’m sure I am not the only person for whom and unexpected song on the radio can do this. I do however know it’s a special kind of music nerd who can change their entire day by passively taking in a song while doing something else.

All year long I kept Voices In My Head close by on my phone and in the earphones as 2016 rattled on. I babbled about it to my music nerd friends and I played it a hundred times.

Come Christmas my good lady wife was at a loss what gift to buy me. We’d been through the wringer financially only a month or so earlier as we’d bought our new house and spent everything we had getting it liveable.

Here we were. Settled in our new house after an arduous 12 months which had seen 3 changes of address, illness, job losses and long long long working hours.

All I wanted for Christmas was a new record. Cheap, easy and simple to wrap.

Patch The Sky was my album of 2016 and here we are a year later and it’s still on heavy rotation on my stereo in this house that’s now a home.

‘Tis the season after all.