Bob Mould - The Fleece, Bristol 17/11/14

19 November 2014, 15:30 | Written by Matt Tomiak

(Live)

(Bob Mould)

Whilst he may never have craved the limelight become a genuine rock household name, make no mistake - Bob Mould is properly important. When considering his long and eventful career, it’s easy to forget just how alien the non-mainstream musical landscape on both sides of the Atlantic was when his first band, Minneapolis natives Hüsker Dü, emerged with their 1981 debut live album Land Speed Record. This was the same year that a promising quartet from Athens, Georgia called R.E.M. released a first brittle single on local imprint Hib-Tone called “Radio Free Europe”. A fourteen- year-old Kurt Cobain was given his first guitar as a birthday gift. Rough Trade was mainly known only as a West London record shop. Sub Pop was still just a fanzine.

So whether inspiration is derived via Hüsker Dü’s blistering hardcore-cum-proto-grunge melodic surges, the honeyed power-pop of the aptly named Sugar or his solo work, the 54 year old Mould has been a vastly influential figure over the last 30 years of alternative rock. Alongside iconic bands such as Black Flag, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr, Hüsker Dü – a group once described by US pop cultural critic Chuck Klosterman as “symbolizing the last bastion of counter-culture within the bloated corporate commercialism of Reagan-era autocracy” - fused melody, aggression and experimentation, laying the foundations of a musical movement as well as a lifestyle ethos. Oh, and he wrote the theme song for The Daily Show as well.

On record and in concert, early Hüsker Dü were loud, high-velocity and boozy: Land Speed Record manages to cram 17 songs into just 26 minutes. Alongside bassist Jason Narducci and drummer Jon Wurster in a packed compact venue tonight (Bob remarks upon the preponderance of cover acts and tribute bands on the Fleece’s forthcoming attractions list) there’s a real sense of past glories being recaptured, all at truly deafening volume. A career-spanning performance contains plenty of highlights, but a full-pelt “I Apologize” from 1985’s New Day Rising is worthy of special mention.

Released just a year after Nirvana’s all-conquering Nevermind, an album that Mould was actually offered the chance to produce, Mould unveiled Copper Blue under the guise of Sugar in 1992. A record accurately described as “nearly perfect” by TIME magazine, it provided Mould with an enthusiastic new post-grunge audience via its hook-laden, unremitting chug-a-lug greatness. Songs from this album sound great here: the jangly power-pop proficiency of “Hoover Dam” provokes a flailing of moshpit limbs and the chiming brilliance of “If I Can't Change Your Mind” receives the evening’s biggest cheer.

As a solo artist, Mould has been quietly prolific. Beauty & Ruin is his eleventh album released under his own name, a run that started way back in 1989 with ruminative, folksy Workbook. The front cover of Beauty & Ruin presents two images of Mould, both as a sprightly young buck and as he appears today as a bearded, bespectacled middle-aged man, following in the reflective wake of a 2011 memoir, “See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody.” It’s a most enjoyable listen too, harking back to the searing hard-edged sounds of yore alongside catchy tracks like “The War” and “I Don't Know You Anymore”, whose soaring vocal harmonies and irresistibly hook-laden make-up prove just as earworm-ish as anything from Copper Blue and are excellent additions to a fantastic set... despite the lingering threat of tinnitus.