Bob Mould

Bob Mould

Mohawk, March 17

There are a few takeaways from Bob Mould's set at the Saturday's Mog party: A) Mould is starting to show his age; B) He looks better now than he did 20 years ago; C) Copper Blue holds up pretty well; maybe there's also D) "Wow, he was young when Hüsker Dü called it a day;" not to mention E) It's been 14 years since The Last Dog and Pony Show, when Mould was supposedly done touring with a live band. Hooray for reneging. Mould and company (just a drummer and bassist) ran through the 10 tracks from his Nineties trio Sugar's debut with spirited ease, efficiency, and distortion. Even once-bright acoustic "If I Can't Change Your Mind" got the full fuzzbox treatment. Maybe the only thing that sounded truly dated was "A Good Idea" and that's probably only because that Pixies' soft-loud-soft formula has now been done to death. Judging from crowd reaction, it was painfully obvious that most of the audience was only positioning itself to see the Roots play next. That's a sad by-product of how long it has been since Mould's been relevant. Nevertheless, for 40 minutes, he proved he can still hang with the kids.