Photo credit: Benjamin Wick
The cover of Bob Mould’s new album, Beauty & Ruin, blends a younger version of the musician smoking a cigarette next to the gray-goateed, bespectacled man he has become. It’s a fitting image for a musician with such a long, storied career—starting in the early ’80s with the seminal hardcore trio Hüsker Dü, moving into noisy power pop with his alt-rock band Sugar and then diversifying his catalog throughout 11 hit or miss solo records. That two-faced album art from his latest record provided the background to his comprehensive show last night at Turner Hall Ballroom, where the indie-rock legend took listeners through a furious sampling of his impressive discography, both old and new.
Oftentimes when a musician with such a rich history plays tracks from a recent record, audiences sit back and soldier through the material in hopes to hear some classic songs later in the set. That’s not the case for Bob Mould. The handful of selections he chose from Beauty & Ruin stacked up nicely against his work with Sugar and Hüsker Dü. How many musicians who arguably wrote their finest material 30 years ago can say that? Not many. It definitely helps that his current band—Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy—injected a youthful energy to Beauty & Ruin scorchers “Little Glass Pill,” “I Don’t Know You Anymore,” “The War” and “Hey Mr. Grey.” Wurster even seemed to bust his snare drum during a string of new songs.
Mould breathed new life into his older material as well. None hit harder than the brooding Candy Apple Grey track “Hardly Getting Over It,” which details the grief over his grandparents’ deaths and ponders his parents’ and his own mortality. The melancholy feeling resonated even deeper due to the recent passing of Mould’s father. But the mood didn’t stay down for long. He followed with the power pop intensity of “Tomorrow Morning,” which calls for relinquishing the past and living in the present. Later, he spat water into the crowd when returning for an encore to add even more chaos to Zen Arcade’s aggressive, melodic “Chartered Trips,” which closed with massive swells of eardrum-bursting noise. Last night, Bob Mould proved that he’s nothing like the wrinkled, graying man seen fading away on the cover of his new album. He’s still very much the fiery young guy smoking a cigarette.
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