As soon as Bob Mould took his guitar and played his furious-melodic songs with his band, everything sounded strangely familiar… strangely because I can’t say I knew his music! Sure the name Hüsker Dü was evoking some hard rock memory but Bob Mould solo work? I was kind of expecting someone gone all-acoustic and very quiet after a hard and loud beginning,… hey many punk rockers have just done that, however I could not have been further from the truth. Bob Mould gave a very loud and high-energy punk show at Amoeba on Tuesday night and it was all free as usual.
But to come back to the familiar sound, I may be a bit slow but I have just realized, tonight, that Mould wrote this song used for the theme of the Daily Show that I watched very regularly! Talk about familiar! However the song has become something else, reduced to a jingle and hardly a real song anymore. Still this dynamic, bright, melodic music was in the back of my mind somewhere, and clicked when they started with ‘The Descent’, one of the few old songs they played, whereas almost all the rest came from Mould’s new album ‘Beauty & Ruin’, just released the same day via Merge.
From start to finish, the music was loud, upbeat and very melodic, but played with a hardcore energy and a punk ferocity. The guitars – actually there was only one, the other one was a bass – were powerful and Bob Mould was getting the biggest sound ever of his instrument. He was playing it like a supermachine which can’t be stopped, shut down or tamed, a bit as Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan does it,… not surprisingly.
The public front row was full of middle-age guys with short hair and beards, looking a bit like Mould himself at a few exceptions, and banging their heads. This tattooed-entire-arm guy on my right was very probably a fan since the Hüsker Dü days, or he looked like someone who could have been, like many other ones around me. Back up by Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster, and Jason Narducy on bass, Mould played a lot of his new songs with a visible joy and a smile on his face, producing a music fueled by enough dynamism and energy to easily start a mosh pit in the store,… this didn’t happen of course, but I saw a few arms in the air and some neck veins boiling.
‘It’s a song cycle. A narrative. It’s nobody’s story but my own… I ran so fast from my past that I caught up with myself. This album is acknowledging that and dealing with every year getting a little tougher’, he wrote to describe ‘Beauty & Ruins’. Ha, sure the lyrics may have been lost in the loudness of the live sound, but you have to know that the album is a journey of loss, reflection, conciliation, mostly dealing with his father’s death. ‘I’ve spent my life listening to complete albums filled with epic stories and perfectly constructed narratives. There was nothing missing from or unnecessary on Beatles and Who albums. It’s a lost art—or at least it was for a while. I really believe it’s coming back.’
He didn’t say much during the short set at Amoeba, as he was probably too occupied at making sure these songs would come alive — and they really did… but, suddenly he said, ‘This is called punk rock, motherfuckers’, just before playing ‘Kid with crooked face’, a really punk fast one that they played with a vengeance and great pleasure. Others songs like ‘I Don’t Know You Anymore’ or ‘Nemeses Are Laughing’ were slower in a pop-punk sense but all these power songs with harmonies, hooks and stirring guitars, sounded like triumphant sonic assaults.
Setlist
The Descent
Little Glass Pill
I Don’t Know You Anymore
Kid With Crooked Face
Nemeses Are Laughing
The War
Hoover
Tomorrow Morning
Hey Mr. Grey
Holiday?
More pictures of the show here
