Bob Mould Band – LiveDog98 (Granary Music)

Here’s one I seek out every six months or so. Cut on the London leg of a European tour, it’s a pretty generous live document from the year Bob decided to serve his band its walking papers and swear an oath to a solo-gig-only lifestyle for the foreseeable future. The move was an attempt to avoid what he perceived as the Neil Young Syndrome. The tendency for aging rockers to forgo the auguries of their advancing years and flaunt a foolhardy belief in the Jethro Tull adage: “Never too old to rock & roll, if you’re too young to die.” Consciously or not, damn if he doesn’t do his best to prove them right, shredding and stomping through an 18-song set running the gamut from Workbook-era anthems like “Lonely Afternoon,” given here a Promethean punch by snarling white noise guitars and skull-ratting low-slung bass, to Bob Mould rave-ups like “I Hate Alternative Rock.” Michael Cerveris rides shotgun on second guitar, matching the front man flange for flange and fuzz for fuzz. The two-prong skyscraper sound works magic on tracks like the opening “Moving Trucks,” Bob’s nth paean to a broken relationship. Bassist Jim Wilson tunes low and subterranean fleshing out the band’s sound beautifully. Drummer Matt Hammon sustains a foursquare propulsive beat. Other highlights to my admittedly-biased ears include an almost dub style hardcore reading of “First Drag of the Day” and an epic seven-plus minute flameout on “Hanging Tree” that finds Bob scraping the bottom planks of the ennui barrel. There’s even room for what might be his most over-the-top angst-ridden title “Roll Over and Die.” Everything culminates with a ripping carousel version of “Man on the Moon”, a tune that playfully borrows the Sun Ra mantra “Space is the Place” in its closing chorus. The Vesuvian racket is fierce and the eighty-or-so minute gig always hits me very similar to the Milwaukee show I caught a month prior to this one. Especially on ear goggles with the volume cranked open enough to send tsunami-sized tendrils of distortion slamming into my Organs of Corti. Bob took stage wearing a light gray t-shirt. By the close of the fifth song it was stained a much darker hue by a heavy saturation of sweat. The memory makes me wish he would toss his ad-hoc moratorium in the trash, reconvene a band (preferably Sugar, Hüsker Dü is too much to hope for) and hit the tour circuit, hard.