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Written by Jason Green Tuesday, 06 December 2005 08:15

Mississippi Nights, St. Louis, September 27, 2005

Singer/songwriter Bob Mould has made a career out of his infamous live shows, from the breakneck-paced hardcore savagery of Hüsker Dü to the “you gotta wear earplugs” power-pop blast of Sugar to his loudest-folk-rocker-ever solo gigs. When Mould announced that his 1998 tour supporting Last Dog and Pony Show would be his last with a full band, fans were understanding, but also understandably upset. Mould’s 2002 “Carnival of Light and Sound” tour sought to fill the void with video screens and prerecorded backing tracks, but something still seemed missing. Likewise, Mould’s solo gigs (half acoustic, half electric) began to dip further into the Hüsker Dü and Sugar songs he’d long ago abandoned, but it just didn’t feel right without Mould on stage left, a bassist to his right, and a drummer at the back.

There was some worry of sparse attendance for Mould’s appearance at Mississippi Nights, with low advance ticket sales and only a few dozen in attendance as openers Uncut took the stage. The Toronto band did the most they could with the scant audience, attacking songs from their debut Those Who Were Hung Hang Here. The quartet sounds like Interpol’s up-tempo cousin, and the extended instrumental passages led to cathartic release on many of the set’s finer songs.

After Uncut wrapped, the area in front of the stage packed tight with the Mould faithful, and the crowd grew steadily. As the lights dropped and Mould’s distorted guitar started to chug, everything fell into place, with Mould at stage left surrounded by a crack band perfectly suited to play his songs. An audio hiccup (a broken mic cable) took some of the heat out of the opening number, but the crowd was worked into a frenzy by his choice of opening with “The Act We Act,” the Pixies tribute “A Good Idea,” and “Changes,” the first three tracks off of Sugar’s 1992 album Copper Blue—widely considered to be Mould’s best album. He then launched into “Circles,” the stunning dirge that opens his latest album, Body of Song. Mould ran through three more new tracks: the radio-ready “Paralyzed,” the danceable “I Am Vision, I Am Sound” (which took on a much more savage personality in its live incarnation), and the dark, brooding “Underneath Days.” It was as if Mould were trying to prove right out of the gate that his new songs could stand side-by-side with his best work. If audience response was any indicator, he won the argument.

The set list became more adventurous from there on out, jumping from hard hitting Hüsker tracks like “I Apologize,” “Could You Be the One?” and “Chartered Trips” to down-tempo numbers like the beautiful Body of Song track “High Fidelity” and the Hüsker Dü elegy “Hardly Getting Over It.” In an interesting pairing, Mould followed “The Receipt” (the lone representative from his misunderstood 2002 album Modulate) with the brand new “Best Thing.” “The Receipt” is rumored far and wide to directly address Mould’s former bandmate Grant Hart, but when paired with “Best Thing” (its opening salvo: “This could be/The sound of me/Looking for some kind of closure”), new meaning can be read into the lyrics that doesn’t seem obvious from its placement on Body of Song.

The main set closed with the HD classic “Celebrated Summer.” Mould had returned “Summer”—long a fan favorite—to his solo acoustic sets, so hearing the song in a full band setting for the first time in nearly two decades bordered on a religious experience. Mould tore through the song’s epic guitar solo before ending the song with its trademark delicate closing.

The crowd was desperate for more and, naturally, more was coming. The first encore opened with the surprise entry “Beating Heart the Prize,” the closing track from Body of Song. Despite being an in-the-studio construction of various guitar loops that wouldn’t seem to lend itself to a live band performance, the song worked swimmingly. The encore closed with the Sugar smash single “If I Can’t Change Your Mind,” a light speed-pop number that seemed a great fit for a closer.

The shocking number of Sugar tracks perfectly suited the crack touring band Mould had assembled. Jason Narducy (former Verbow singer, now in Rockets Over Sweden) held down the low end, and his backing vocals sounded so much like Sugar bassist David Barbe that it was, at times, surreal. Richard Morel—DJ extraordinaire and Mould’s partner in the electronica side project Blowoff—handled the keys, and while they were disappointingly low in the mix, they provided a fuller sound than Mould’s previous band incarnations. Fugazi’s Brendan Canty was unbelievable behind the drums, playing hopelessly complicated fills without breaking a sweat. His energetic drum rolls during “Makes no Sense at All” provided one of the evening’s high points.

Everything locked into place as the second encore wrapped with “Man on the Moon,” the gorgeous nod to My Bloody Valentine that provided the ending to Sugar’s Copper Blue. When all was said and done, Mould had covered, in one fashion of another, virtually every album he has released since 1984 (the only ones not represented: the 1990 solo effort Black Sheets of Rain, the 1994 Sugar classic File Under: Easy Listening, and 1998’s vastly underrated Last Dog and Pony Show). After the show, the ever-friendly frontman even came out into the audience to shake hands and sign autographs. From beginning to end, the show was everything a Bob Mould fan could ever ask for.