Review and photos by Jeremy Elwood
I had a birthday recently, but if I needed to know that I’m racking up the years I could have just as easily looked around at the crowds at gigs I’ve been to over the last month. The Pixies, The The, Pearl Jam and now Bob Mould have all brought out a similar wave of black clad middle agers, myself now firmly embedded amongst them. We’re a keen bunch, still, and thankfully most of these acts are still performing with an urgency and passion that keeps them on the right side of nostalgia.
I was there the last time Bob Mould played in Auckland; 22 years ago, at the now deeply missed Kings Arms. He may be in his 60s now, but if anything, this set was louder more raw and more punk than that one.
Mould’s career has three distinct eras, even if chronologically they’ve jumped around a bit. From Hüsker Dü, the Ramones-inspired garage band who in turn became a major inspiration on the hardcore, grunge and noise-rock scenes, through Sugar, his most commercially successful, but shortest-lived, trio, and a long string of solo albums strung in between and up to now. This gig covered the lot; only a couple of hits from Sugar’s masterpiece Copper Blue but otherwise a genuinely career-spanning retrospective. And there were a lot of songs. 23 over 90 minutes, a frenetic, relentless pace basically unbroken aside from an occasional gulp (and one spit) of water, and brief acknowledgments for applause. About four songs in Mould says “I have no voice, so I’m just going to play”, and he lives up to that promise, although his singing voice, at least, was holding up well.
Another promise kept is the title of this tour “Solo and Electric”. From the start, when without fanfare he literally hits the stage running, it’s just him, a Fender Stratocaster, and one amp turned way, way up.
Which is where things let me down, a bit. Three things that have made all of Bob Mould’s work stand out for me, from his thrashier early days through the quieter parts of his excellent solo output, are his ear for melody, his quirky mastery of harmony, and his knack for writing knockout bridges in songs. Obviously harmony is an issue for a solo performance (and mercifully he didn’t lower himself into the recent hacky obsession with loop pedals), but while the melodies and structures came through, they had to fight through an endless wall of distortion to get there. Filling a large stage like The Powerstation with nothing more than an electric guitar is a big ask, and in terms of energy and power, he was all over it – but in terms of distinguishing one song from another, there was a sameness to the pace, volume and lack of layering that threatened to overwhelm what is, in recorded form, a widely diverse body of work.
In the end though, he basically bludgeoned us into happy submission. Ending the “set” with the Sugar classic If I Can’t Change Your Mind, he didn’t even insult our intelligence by pretending to leave the stage before his “encore”, instead conducting the applause to a fever pitch before blasting though solo hit See a Little Light and Hüsker Dü’s Something I Learned Today and Makes No Sense At All. A lifetime of music summed up in a stand-and-deliver, take-no-prisoners sonic assault that has left me humming Bob Mould songs all day. Although the more tuneful versions I’m hearing in my head are from the albums, not necessarily last night’s show.