Bob Mould: Solo and razor-sharp

Bob Mould buzzed onto stage, his vintage Fender Stratocaster in hand, and dove into a song I did not know. He came to Colorado Springs’ Black Sheep touring on Blue Hearts, a record I had not heard.

He did not make anyone wait for familiar songs. Mould, one of the catchiest songwriters around, I knew dropped into the iconic riff of Husker Du’s Flip Your Wig and bruised into I Apologize from New Day Rising. 

He bounded around the stage full of energy and eager to fill the space without a drummer or bassist. He was alone and dropping riff after riff. Mould gulped water between songs. Then he gasped his way to the unavoidable Colorado Springs concert line. 

“What exactly is the altitude here?” he said. I had to laugh, because I was warned musicians would do this when I moved here. They might be accustomed to Denver, but that extra 1,000 feet of elevation in the Springs can hit a singer hard. 

He got his expected 6,035 response, commented into his need to work out more. Mould quickly learned the cadence of playing a show at high altitude. He took longer breaks between songs, entertained the crowd with story interludes and danced around stage a whole lot less. The stories focused on the road, from his early tours with Husker Du and being a young gay man in San Francisco to his current trek, in which he was driving the entire tour. 

Mould eschewed band and crew. He confessed his tour was a driving trip between shows following the upper Midwest out to Bozeman then Idaho, then turning south for Utah and a series of shows across Colorado’s Front Range. That explained the need for a single guitar and a few small stacks of amplifiers. 

He played the same guitar the entire set, the Stratocaster he called "his baby" when a brief rain rushed him inside the Black Sheep to start his set. Aside from a few brief tuning changes and a capo on several songs, he barely altered his approach. 

 No one in the crowd seemed to mind. The crowd did not reach 150 in a room with 400-person capacity. But no one left disappointed with Mould’s relentless 90-minute set. He had an opener but no band, just himself and the Stratocaster he called “my baby” when rain forced him to run inside the Black Sheep before his set. I expected he might trade it for an acoustic at some point but he stuck with his electric setup. Not that I minded. Mould made it work. 

For a guy who never had a hit, See a Little Light would qualify as a song people might know from its appearance throughout pop culture. After a splash it electronic that alienated some longtime fans (myself included), Mould shifted back to the distorted melodic pop he helped found. He remains an alternative rock pioneer, even if other pioneers from the early 1980s earned greater renown. 

Attempts to see Mould perform over the decades had been fleeting, as he had not been a regular at mid-sized venues. At the best small venue in Colorado Springs, Mould could not have picked a better place to experience him the first time. Zen Arcade, an album approaching its 40th anniversary, received a fair amount of attention.

Classic tracks like Something I Learned Today and Never Talking to You Again slotted in nicely among his more recent tracks, including several from Blue Hearts. Never Talking to You Again caught me by surprise, since Mould's late Husker-mate Grant Hart wrote and sang the original.  

Mould’s second band, Sugar, did not get the same attention as Husker Du, but Mould dropped a few favorites from the early 1990s, when he almost broke through with Copper Blue, a tremendous slab of pop songs buried in distortion. But two Copper Blue tracks, Hoover Dam and If I Can't Change Your Mind, slotted in nicely among the Husker Du tracks and newer songs. 

His recent career received a few highlights, including Voices in my Head from Patch the Sky, the last Mould record I bought. 

After he pushed past the 20-song mark, I didn't expect Mould would push the set past the 90-minute mark. He gave the crowd the signal for one more song, and he plowed into Makes No Sense at All, a last track from Flip Your Wig, and one more Husker Du essential for the road.