The Constant Impermanence of Bob Mould

Earlier this month, Bob Mould told me an anecdote about how people view his live shows. Somebody once tweeted something like, Oh, my God. Im at a Bob Mould show, and it seems like its been an hour and a half of the same song. Its incredible,' he said. At first, I sort of took offense to it, and then I realized, no, thats actually like, Oh, cool.'

Few artists have upheld (or at least revisited) a musical point of view quite like Mould. Sure, hes gone on electronic excursions and enjoys stints DJing. But when you watch him lead his bandmates his way through 40 years worth of anxiety set to staticky guitar, its an incredible sight. On Thursday night, he played nearly two hours worth of Hsker D, Sugar and solo songs 29 onslaughts of buzzsaw guitar in total at Brooklyn Steel, located in Brooklyns Bushwick neighborhood. It was a glorious blur of flannel and restlessness. (He was even selling orange-and-yellow plaid flannels at his merch table for $125.)

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For whatever detours Mould has taken in the past the 2002 albums Modulate and Long Playing Grooves are still head scratchers he has found renewed focus in recent years. Since assembling a steady trio on Silver Age that includes bassist Jason Narducy and Superchunks drummer, Jon Wurster, hes been consistently writing the sort of acerbically self-aware missives that defined his early career. His most recent album, this years Sunshine Rock, came with a twist love songs! positivity! but, other than a few orchestral flourishes, it presented a more refined vision of what hed always been striving for: emotional transparency (on his terms).

The set list presented an interesting mosaic of who Mould was. There was a hearty helping of Sunshine Rockers (nine out of 12 tracks) and the title cut, Sunny Love Song and What Do You Want Me to Do showed off todays Mould: a loving and fun-loving man who, at age 58, is content with his legacy. This also came through in the way he paced the stage, whipping his Stratocasters about, and how he sat proudly on the drum riser between encores as a loop of feedback punished his fans ears. There was the aching orphan, coming to terms with the loss of his parents within a couple of years ago on songs from 2016s Patch the Sky and 2014s Beauty & Ruin; the best was the latters Hey Mr. Grey on which parses aging by singing that kids are so young, theyre so dumb, they dont understand. Moulds problem has always been that hes understood so much and felt so much.

That was most evident on the songs he chose from the middle of his career. Tunes like Sugars secretly lugubrious If I Cant Change Your Mind (with its downright upbeat chorus) and the ponderous Hoover Dam found him making sense of all the conflicts within him. But those, along with two selections from his first solo album, 1989s Workbook, also show off a sort of tenderness hes outgrown. Against a backdrop of Roger McGuinninfluenced 12-string, hed sung, How can you qualify difference between a sin and a lie? on Sinners and Their Repentances, which he made heavier last night. But in more recent years, hes written songs like Black Confetti, which almost became a metal song in Brooklyn, on which he sings, In my dreams you fade away from me/Through time, through space and emotion. Its a new perspective.

To complete the collage, he dedicated nearly a third of his set to songs by Hsker D, the trend-setting post-hardcore band he cofounded four decades ago next month. In some ways, those songs were the most interesting to hear him sing now, since he grew so much in just eight years as a songwriter. That iteration of Bob Mould was contemplative like the Moulds of later years but a bit more like a raw nerve. Has there ever been a less sincere Im Sorry than I Apologize? He was a Reagan protester on In a Free Land, a defeatist on Makes No Sense at All, a nostalgist on Celebrated Summer and an ironist when covering The Mary Tyler Moore Shows theme song Love Is All Around. He was finding his footing then and when hearing these songs interspersed with his recent high-water marks, it shows how these songs predicted this.

Although the set list didnt provide a complete portrait of who Mould has been for the past 40 years (he skipped over many of his releases between 1990 through 2011) it showed who he is now, and it felt like a complete portrait. His sheer dynamism pushing the band to play its longest set of the tour so far suggests hes happy with who he is now, too. It might be hard to believe from listening to his lyrics, but Bob Mould might just finally be all right.

Bob Mould set list:

The War
A Good Idea
I Apologize
Hoover Dam
Your Favorite Thing
See a Little Light
Sunny Love Song
I Dont Know You Anymore
The Descent
Thirty Dozen Roses
The Final Years
Sinners and Their Repentances
In a Free Land
Sunshine Rock
Hey Mr. Grey
If I Cant Change Your Mind
I Fought
Sin King
Lost Faith
Something I Learned Today
Losing Time
Chartered Trips