ACL Music Fest Live Shots

Bob Mould

Zilker Park, Sept. 25

Bob Mould is a lean, mean, rock machine. Okay, I don't know about his disposition, but even with more than a little grey in the goatee, he looks good – trimmed down and toned up. And holy God did he bring it. From the Godzilla crunch of opener "The Act We Act," Mould and his rhythm section were the only thing in Zilker as punishing as the sun. They cut up 14 slices of fury and served them up in brutalizing four-minute intervals. It was glorious. Drawing from the entirety of his 20-year career, the set was unexpectedly heavy on Sugar's Copper Blue. Moreover, Candy Apple Grey's "Hardly Getting Over It" was certainly a peculiar choice for the first Hüsker Dü track to pull out, but Mould worked it from an acoustic dirge to a distort-a-thon. Even the obligatory tracks from the recent and uneven Body of Song were thoroughly fist-in-air apropos. It was all so simple: get a Strat and a Marshall amp, put a fuzzbox between the two, then rip away. With a finishing dash through "I Apologize," "Celebrated Summer," and "Makes No Sense At All" Mould put on a rock clinic for anyone smart enough to take notes. The day's biggest lesson? Old people still rule. And look good doing it.