Musings on Mould, Part ?

One of the peripheral reason for my move to Minneapolis six years ago was the regularity with which Bob Mould makes tour stops to the municipality. His Twin Cities roots run deep and the ties remain intact. I’ve written about Mould several times in these pages, the entries reflecting the ups and downs in my affinity for his music. Detours into dance club electronica and a propensity for angsty lyrics no matter how earnest haven’t always been rewarding moves. His new record, District Line, still hasn’t quite reconciled the stylistic incongruities, but as with past efforts the gold content still largely outweighs the pyrite.

Mould played First Avenue last night to a respectable, but hardly packed crowd, the first gig in a 20 city tour. It’s hard to approximate the number of times he’s played that particular stage since the early Hüsker years, but it has to number in the triple digits. I hit the venue early enough to catch the opening act, Halou, a five-piece from San Francisco mired in its self-conscious mix of indie rock influences. Two guitarists, one doubling on keyboards, crafted a melismatic sea of feedback around a female singer. The drummer and bassist were largely anonymous. Their short set left little of a lasting impression and felt more like a distraction.

Mould and crew set up quickly with a line-up nearly the same as the last time they rolled through save for the absence of Brendan Canty on drums, replaced by new recruit whose name escaped me. A soundcheck of the signature cerulean Strat elicited a few cheers from the audience. The set opened strangely with a string of vintage Sugar songs starting with “The Act We Act” and “A Good Idea”. Mould and bassist Jason Narducci lept and sprinted all over the stage, hammering on their instruments and building fast, finger-abrading versions of the tunes. Drinking in the clumsy histrionics, I couldn’t help reflecting on Mould’s reasoning behind retiring from touring in the late-Nineties, essentially that he didn’t want to end up a parody of himself. While the music was definitely rocking, the visuals seemed bear out, at least partially, the wisdom of this tack. Narducci’s explosive and exaggerated string plucks were particularly amusing in this regard, his beanpole frame stalking the stage and wobbling wildly at the knees. From my balcony perch, keyboardist Richard Morel (also a collaborator on Mould’s DC-based DJ project Blowoff) was obscured behind a row of garbage receptacles, but his contributions sounded modest by comparison, designed more for color than prominence. The exception: a late set rendition of “Circles” where Morel’s sparse accompaniment of Mould’s vocals beautifully presaged the coming ferocity of the amplified strings.

The next half dozen songs zoomed by in a blur with Mould touching on “See a Little Light”, “Egøveride”, “I Am Vision I Am Sound” and others from his solo canon. Banter was minimal, until he paused and wryly mused “oh yeah, the new album”. I counted three from that source, “The Silence Between Us”, “Again and Again” and “Miniature Parade”, and all translated well to the live quartet, shorn of most of their production accoutrements and boiled down to rock-receptive cores. Still, I couldn’t shake the rushed feeling of their delivery as if the band were intent on reaching the finish line in record time. Part of the problem was the distracting presence of a drunk fan on the balcony stairs in front of me. His stumbling impressions of Richard Nixon and repeated near tumbles down the stairs continued despite interventions by myself and others and he swiftly became an abject lesson in the ineptitude of the First Avenue event staff. To put it another way, it’s apparently easier to be impeached as a president than it is to get 86’d from the Ave.

A one-two punch of Hüsker standards, “I Apologize” and the immortal “Celebrated Summer” primed the audience for an unexpected finale choice. Mould seemed re-energized by the shift in repertoire, particularly on the second, his hallmark song. It’s a number he’s played countless times, but remains a near perfect piece of melodic song craft, equally effective in the service of a full electric band or a lone acoustic guitar. A slight pause and Mould signed off a selection that surpassed my most fanciful expectations: the old Hüsker chestnut “Divide and Conquer”, my favorite entry in the band’s somewhat-mouldy (sorry) songbook. Apparently I wasn’t alone in my affection as the crowd erupted at the strains of the familiar racing loop riff and Mould’s shout-sung lyrics:

“Well they divided up all the land
And we've got states and cities
Cities have their neighborhoods
And more subdivisions

There's countries divided by walls
Oceans and latitudes
And longitude, longing to find out
Just what they're missing

They're lots of area codes
And nine-digit zip codes
Secret decoder ring codes
Arteries, shopping nodes

We'll invent some new computers
Link up the global village
And get AP, UPI, and Reuters
To tell everybody the news
[ Lyrics accessible from http://www.rare-lyrics.com ]
We'll be one happy neighborhood
Spread out across the world
But who's going to stop that burglar
From breaking in to my house
If he lives that far away

We'll be just like old friends
No means to your ends
The police state is to busy
And the neighborhood's getting out of hand

It's not about my politics
Something happened way too quick
A bunch of men who played it sick
They divide, conquer

It's all here before your eyes
Safety is a big disguise
That hides among the other lies
They divide, conquer

Well I expect I won't be heard
Because my silence is assured
Never a discouraging word
They divide and conquer

They divide and conquer”

I suppose the choice makes perfect sense given the long-standing cultural and political climate around these parts, but it was still an unmitigated thrill to hear the old man run down the song with such sound and fury. And Narducci’s bodily exaggerations had finally found a vessel apposite of the energy expenditure. An encore was forthcoming, but I felt compelled to split since nothing could have topped the closer.