This show was part of a free, two-day festival at Penn’s Landing sponsored by Southern Comfort. Although he played to a mostly disinterested crowd on one of the hottest days of the year, BOB MOULD still played a terrific, hour-long set. He was backed by the same band that he toured with last fall, including, most notably, drummer BRENDAN CANTY (formerly of FUGAZI) and Mould’s BLOWOFF (a weekly DJ party he hosts at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC) collaborator RICH MOREL on keyboards and other electronic gadgets.
Mould played after hip-hoppers DE LA SOUL, and the crowd had thinned out considerably after their set. While some Mould diehards were clearly in attendance, it was obvious that most of the crowd wasn’t there to see him. Nevertheless he persevered, playing a very similar set to his full-band tour last fall. Specifically, he tended to play songs in blocks, focusing on SUGAR’s 1992 classic Copper Blue (arguably his career zenith, at least post-HUSKER DU) for the first four songs of his set, then following that up with four songs in a row from his newest release, last year’s strong Body of Song. In particular, “Underneath Days” was a standout among the new material, even though it’s not a particularly strong song on record.
To close out the set, he finished with four Husker Du songs, starting with “Hardly Getting Over It,” which provided a nice, mellow break from Mould and company’s noise assault, at least until the song’s thundering closing kicked in. After that, it was back to the fast, hard stuff, with a blistering “I Apologize” from Husker Du’s 1985 classic New Day Rising. “Celebrated Summer” (also from New Day Rising) followed and then came a blistering rendition of “Makes No Sense At All.” The set was truly like a force of nature in terms of its intensity, power and passion. Even those who’d never heard Mould’s music were forced to pay attention just because of the sheer volume.
Though there were people talking over the music, fortunately I couldn’t hear any of them since Mould and company were so loud! I forgot my earplugs, so I’m glad this show was outside! I would’ve liked to stay for the FLAMING LIPS’ headlining set, but unfortunately this show was on the same night as another show (MISSION OF BURMA at the First Unitarian Church), so I had to miss them.
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