Photo of Bob Mould by Laura Jerele
When I interviewed Bob Mould for our site last week, we talked about how his setlist shifts around when he plays solo electric shows. “That point at the beginning of the show where you say, ‘How’s it going out there?’,” he said. “That is actually taking the temperature for the rest of the show and sort of figuring out, ‘Oh, do you want to hear me talk more? People want more guitar solos? People want more punk rock?’” Most artists wait at least a few songs into their set, asking the crowd during a quiet moment while they tune their guitars. Not this night: they were the first words out of his mouth, and having taken the Delmar Hall crowd’s temperature, he knew we were ready for all of the above, but from the start? We wanted to rock.
“All jetpacks are loaded,” he grinned. “I’m Bob Mould.” And then: blast off.
The set opened with “The War,” the centerpiece of his 2014 solo album Beauty & Ruin that tackles Mould’s often contentious relationship with his then-dying father. Mould’s “solo electric” show is just that—the man, his electric guitar, an amp, and nothing else—but from the very first moment he raised a ruckus, chugging out distorted guitar riffs and sprinting around the stage as he fired off the first of many fiery guitar solos of the night, slowing down to offer some beauty during the breakdown in the song’s back half. The stage set, Mould then blasted through a trio of hits from his most famous past projects (that’d be ’80s punk trio Hüsker Dü and ’90s alt-rock trio Sugar), songs that could close any of his shows but here served only to whet the audience’s appetite. First came “Flip Your Wig,” a Hüsker Dü classic, Mould singing both his and bandmate Grant Hart’s vocal parts and also managing to perform the magic trick of playing both the rhythm guitar and the guitar solo at the same time. (I watched him do it and I’m still not sure how the hell that worked.) Another Hüsker Dü classic, the punchy pop-punk ditty “I Apologize,” had Mould rocking back on his heels to wail out the song’s emphatic final verse, sweat beading on his forehead. Sugar’s “Hoover Dam” was another crowd-pleaser, played at double the speed of the album version to make up in energy what it lacks in the original’s bass, drums, and keyboards.
It’d be exhausting (for both Mould and the crowd) to go at full steam all night, so he dialed it back a bit with “Stand Guard,” its muscular guitar riff conjuring memories of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” The pace ratcheted back up with the pop-punk of “Siberian Butterfly,” which established a pattern for the middle third of the show, alternating slower ones and faster ones. This was a little jarring in places, but absolutely needed. I’ve seen Mould live in pretty much every setting he’s attempted since the end of Sugar (solo electric, solo acoustic, solo with backing tracks, three-piece band, five-piece band). The solo electric shows have their benefits because they blend the intimacy of a solo performance with the punk rock energy that an acoustic guitar can’t quite conjure. But there are risks too: having a drummer makes it easy to shift the energy level, but when it’s just an electric guitar, there’s a real hazard that all the songs start to sound the same, especially since in that setting Mould tends to play everything much, much faster than the album version.
This night, though, he hit just the right balance, making this night without a doubt the best solo performance I’ve had the privilege to see Mould play. The fast songs kept the energy up—particularly “The Descent,” his absolute best latter-day song and his most joyous vocal performance of the night up to this point—while the slow songs offered adjustments in mood. I might argue that “Sinners and Their Repentances” and “I’m Sorry, Baby, But You Can’t Stand in My Light Anymore” could have stood to be “prettied up” some more—an even slower pace, a cleaner guitar tone—to match the songs’ strengths and to mark an even bigger divide from the punk songs they were squeezed between.
But, then, there was “Walls in Time.” “It’s long,” Mould joked as he introduced it, “but I think it’ll be worth it.” And it so was. A song originally written in 1988, in the aftermath of Hüsker Dü’s breakup, it was intended for his 1989 solo debut Workbook but not recorded until 2008’s District Line. This night, it was a perfect mix of tones—the most singer-songwriter-y he sounded all night, but also played slow and loud, with distorted guitar strums that cascaded down like sheets of rain. “Walls in Time” has never been in my top tier of favorite Mould songs—it’s not even my favorite song on the album it comes from (that’d be “The Silence Between Us”)—but as performed here, in all its epic, cathartic glory, it was the absolute Song of the Night.
Earlier in the show, Mould had stopped for a brief political rant—nothing too controversial, honestly, calling Donald Trump “a grifter” but also stressing that he has friends that are conservative and isn’t against conservatism in general, just the strident MAGA strain that has infected the Republican party in recent years. This was met mostly with woos (but also a few mumbled obscenities from the guy behind me, who clearly quit listening and was having his own muttered argument with things Mould wasn’t even saying), but perhaps having taken the temperature of the room, Mould later started another song break by saying “This is the part of the show I usually go off on a dark tangent,” but that he decided to give us the super-truncated version. “This song,” he followed, “goes out to all the people who say, ‘Bob, just shut up and play’.”
What followed were a pair of songs that don’t need a dark monologue to introduce them, as they go to dark enough places on their own: the emotional gut-punch duo from Hüsker Dü’s 1986 album Candy Apple Grey, “Too Far Down” and “Hardly Getting Over It.” “Too Far Down” was clearly a heavy emotional lift for Mould—he let out a heavy exhale at the end of the song. “Hardly Getting Over It” hit the emotional triggers even harder, especially in the last verse when the lyrics’ thoughts turn to pondering mortality and the inevitable death of one’s parents. Having, like Mould, lost both parents myself, I could barely make it through the song as a bystander so I can’t even fathom how he was able to get through that last verse, but he did, dropping the feedback and making it slow and gentle and gorgeous before purging all of his emotions into a positively squalling guitar solo then bringing the song in for a soft and sweet landing.
Emotional catharsis achieved, Mould kicked the pace back up for the show’s final third and never really let up. Another Hüsker Dü classic, “Celebrated Summer,” followed up its two dour predecessors with a measure of hope. Then it was back to newer territory, with a trio of songs from the last decade. He wrestled a solo out of his guitar on “The Ocean.” His fingers danced all over the fretboard for the entirety of “Daddy’s Favorite,” to the point where Mould even chuckled at his own showboating. “Black Confetti” was positively savage, and once again quite Neil Young-y. He then wrapped up the main set with his two most jubilant songs of the night: a bouncy jaunt through Sugar’s “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” (he nimbly ping-ponged between the main riff and the solo, and even sang the little arpeggiated bit over the song’s outro) and a super-high energy run through “See a Little Light.”
To call the last bit an encore would be a bit of an exaggeration, as Mould didn’t even leave the stage. After the last note of “See a Little Light” rang out, the crowd leapt to their feet for a standing ovation. Mould sort of half-wandered over toward the side of the stage, never breaking eye contact with the crowd as he jokingly mouthed things like “You want another one? One more?” He closed with two more Hüsker Dü classics. Zen Arcade’s vicious opener “Something I Learned Today” was as aggressive as ever, but delivered with a smile, Mould clearly having a gas. (He’d later name it his choice for Song of the Night.) Then “Makes No Sense At All” was the crowd-pleasing finale, an effervescent pop-punk tune greeted with an enthusiastic audience singalong.
All-in-all, it was pretty much all you could ask for in a setlist. We got three songs from the new record, sure, but also two songs apiece from Hüsker Dü’s four most beloved albums, two from Sugar’s Copper Blue, two from his solo debut Workbook but also two each from his modern masterpieces Silver Age and Patch the Sky. Part of me wants to quibble that we didn’t get anything from Last Dog and Pony Show or Sunshine Rock (the former probably his most under-rated album, the latter probably my favorite album from the late career peak he’s been in for the last dozen years), but c’mon, he’s got 26—26!—releases in his repertoire, I know he can’t play everything, and I have no complaints about what we did get. I left the show positively floating, and that’s about all you can ask for.
Che Arthur opened with an energetic set that very much fit the vibe of the night. A Chicago-based musician who helmed the Sonic Youth-y band Atombombpocketknife in the early 2000s, Arthur similarly took the stage solo, just him and an acoustic guitar which he played harder than I have ever seen anyone play an acoustic guitar in my life. Because of the combination of the hard playing and a few alternate tunings, he had to pause a few times during his 30-minute set to tune, and despite claiming “I’d play all 11 songs without stopping if I could,” he was a gregarious and funny stage presence, while his songs managed to capture both the passion of early 2000s Midwest emo and the prettiness of Led Zeppelin III. | Jason Green
Setlist:
The War
Flip Your Wig
I Apologize
Hoover Dam
Stand Guard
Siberian Butterfly
Sinners and Their Repentances
The Descent
I’m Sorry, Baby, But You Can’t Stand In My Light Anymore
Next Generation
Walls in Time
Keep Believing
Too Far Down
Hardly Getting Over It
Celebrated Summer
The Ocean
Daddy’s Favorite
Black Confetti
If I Can’t Change Your Mind
See a Little Light
Something I Learned Today
Makes No Sense at All
