Bob MouldSure, this night may well have been, as someone called it, 'The 2013 Symposium of Ancient Alternative Band T-shirts', but it was more an enduring proof that the basic three blokes on guitar, bass and drums – one of whom is yelling his lungs, guts and heart out – is still all you need.
Knievel were both a bit right and wrong as support. While similarly vintaged, their sometimes dense layers of guitar and keyboard atmospheres contrasted with Mould's lean strafing runs later. But The Time I Found My Feet still takes your memories places.
Bob Mould arrived with just a smile and wave, strapped on the blue Strat, counted in The Act You Act from Sugar's Copper Blue – and it just didn't let up, with the only gaps that three seconds you got between tracks on the record. The towering Hoover Dam makes this reviewer howl along if driving to it, so it's nice to know there are several hundred others who do the same.
Credit to the band – enthused bassist Jason Narducy and flailing drummer Jon Wurster – that they kept pace with this grey-bearded Energizer Bunny. His guitar rings, howls, then spirals away. He paused for breath as they left the Sugar-rush behind, to compliment the city and the weather. Then straight into a similar assault on his latest, Silver Age. Though 20 years apart, they are cut from the same cloth – maybe without pondering much on his curious electro-dance tangent round the turn of the century.
They left to a loop of feedback, returning with a last happy blast of Copper Blue – If I Can't Change Your Mind – then went further back, including Hüsker Dü's punk squall, Hate Paper Doll. He wiped the sweat off, thanked us genuinely, then smiled and waved in exit as he entered. Inspired.
