ICON. Pioneer. Trailblazer. Punk rock troubadour. Bob Mould is all of these things - and still a complete gent.

He has one of the loudest and fiercest voices in rock. But, as Alasdair Morton chats to the former Husker Du frontman, he finds Mould in reflective mood.

“2014 was a real tough year for me personally, I had a lot of personal loss, people passing away,” Mould says of the turmoil that informed Sky’s genesis. His mother passed away between this LP and its predecessor Beauty and Ruin in 2014, his father a couple of years prior to that.

Mould originally considered a fast-paced punk rock route for the record - three-minute blitzes picking up where Beauty & Ruin tracks Little Glass Pill and Kid With Crooked Face left off - but found art as such didn’t mirror life. Frenetic thrashing with volume shaking the roof wasn’t where he was at.

“So I spent the first six months of 2015 essentially by myself at home in San Francisco working on music, using it to figure out what was going on in my life and to heal myself. This is the end result.”

A more introspective body of work, Patch The Sky shows yet another of the many strings to Mould’s multitude of musical bows. He has a back catalogue that incorporates punk, singer songwriter, acoustic and electronica – “whatever labels you want to put on it!” - en route to writing the rulebook that would inform the alternative rock of the 90s. He rarely follows, and is more frequently found forging a path of his own, telling the stories of his life through song. And yet given this precedent, Patch The Sky is a remarkably personal offering. “The title is a basic idea where when people leave this earth, they tear through the sky and leave a hole and you have to fix it up somehow or else you will go right through it,” he explains.

If he is bearing his heart and soul on this this record, he is doing so with the backing of friends; Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster join him again for both the record and tour – on bass and drums respectively – for what is the trio’s third LP together after 2012’s Silver Age and Beauty & Ruin. “I’ve known Jason and Jon as friends and musicians for a long time,” Mould says. “They’re very familiar with the different languages of my work, whether it be punk rock or power pop – they know all of those and it is very instinctive.

“There is an ultimate simplicity to the three piece – rock ‘n’ roll has always been that way,” he continues, considering his current – and quite possibly – his favoured format. “With a three piece you can clearly hear what is happening and what everyone’s contributions are. And it makes it easy to improvise and have a lot of fun!”

And it is fun that Mould is definitely having right now as he basks in a period of commercial and critical success he hasn’t enjoyed since the early 90s when he formed Sugar from the ashes of Husker Du and enjoyed immediate success as their debut was voted Album of the Year by the NME.

A spot on tour with Dave Grohl and his Foo Fighters in 2011, including playing to 65,000 at Milton Keynes Bowl, brought Mould to a new audience. If it somewhat poetically marked the beginning of this third chapter to his career, he seems quite at ease with the almost elder statesman role he’s earned.

“At 55, it is a great luxury and a great joy – I don’t take any of it for granted,” he says as he reflects on thirty plus years in which he’s chronicled through music his life and the world as he sees and experiences it. “I’m happy that people are paying closer attention this decade. But this is what I do - I do it for myself, and am happy to do it knowing that people enjoy it!”

And still full of the same visceral energy that has always fuelled him, Mould is certainly sure of one thing about the tour-closing show this weekend at the Engine Rooms - “It’s gonna be a really great show!” And loud.

Bob Mould plays the Engine Rooms on Sunday.

Visit engineroomssouthampton.com