PHOTO: RYAN BAKERINK | There’s never a power shortage when Bob Mould comes to town. With a snarling guitar and yowling voice, he continues to electrify audiences just as he did 45 years ago when he was fronting the potent Twin Cities trio Hüsker Du. Back at the Black Cat in DC, where he’s played solo shows in the past, he was back in top-notch trio form with longtime backers Jason Narducy on bass and Jon Wurster on drums.
In a blistering 27-song set that seemed to charge by in no time, Mould played with a fervor and simplicity that echoed his earliest work, or that of his ‘90s group Sugar. On the current swing, he’s blending the sharp, simple songs from his latest album Here We Go Crazy with an equal half dozen from its 2020 predecessor, Blue Hearts. Still, the solid set began with a pair from the 2012 album that first constituted the present trio, Silver Age.
At 64, with a silvery, well-trimmed beard and professorial black horn-rimmed specs, Mould looks very down to business. But he’ll attack his guitar with a backspin riff that may unleash a sudden one-man mosh pit across the stage, evoking an inner passion.
At one point, he unspooled a windmill on his instrument, putting him in the tradition of rockers going back to Pete Townshend and Keith Richards. He hinted at one point that the sudden cutting of the air conditioning may have been to aid his vocals (if so, he wouldn’t be the first singer to request that accommodation). “Hot enough for you?” he asked the sellout crowd, adding, “The hotter it gets, the better I sing.“
The new songs, like the old, were built on snarling declarations and accusations delivered through tuneful melodies accompanying the electric assault. Mostly his target came in interpersonal relations, but others were political screeds, such as his 2020 “American Crisis,” that begins “I never thought I’d see this bullshit again.”
Well-received all around, there was an extra jolt of reaction when the Hüsker Du songs eventually came—“Never Talking to You Again” and “Celebrated Summer” mid-show; “Flip Your Wig” a little later; and a show-closing assault of “Hate Paper Doll,” “Something I Learned Today,” and “Makes No Sense at All” enveloping The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme that Hüsker Du once covered in a peak Minneapolis moment, “Love is All Around.” (Which, thematically, is probably opposite of “Hate Paper Doll”).
Mould was matched well by the opener, J. Robbins (band) from Baltimore. Like the headliner, it was a power trio fronted by a bald-headed middle-aged guy who used to front a popular post-punk band, in this case Jawbox. And like Mould, Robbins had a bunch of newer songs that showed an equal amount of passion and punch that he bounced off the counterpoint of bassist Brooks Harlan and the thundering drums of Daren Zentek.
Robbins proclaimed annoyance at sharing a birthday with the White House occupant he derides in “Dear Leader,” but like the headliner, he and his “pragmatically named” band let their music show its fury in their fine 11-song set.
