Bob Mould at Fillmore September 26

You know, if he's going to come out there and kick everybody's ass for 75 minutes, Bob Mould should really provide us with a safe word.

He opened up with two Husker songs:  "Flip Your Wig" and "Hate Paper Doll."  That should have been fair warning to what he was up to.  Both songs are from the album Flip Your Wig, which was the Huskers conscious attempt to crank out a punk-rock version of a pop album, one that would emulate the melodic sensibilities of the 60s and 70s pop/rock that Mould (and Hart and Nortion presumably) grew up on, combined with the background of pure guitar noise that marks out so much of Mould's sound over the years.

This was a good preview of the rest of the show . . . whether Husker Du songs, Sugar songs, or Mould solo songs, Mould's trio crunched through with barely a break.

My favorite part of the show, though, was the closing. They finished the oncore with a version of the Husker Du song, "Chartered Trips."  As the song ended and Mould and the band ditched their instruments, the background noise remained--this feedback (such a cliche to call it a "wall of sound" at this point), that has been part of Mould's sound in one way or another for 30 years, droned on and on.  I looked around at my fellow concert-goers . . . throughout the whole show I was feeling a bit unspecial; this was a group of 30- and 40-something white guys who seemed to know the songs, seemed to "get it" as far as this whole noise pop thing goes.  But at this moment, when I looked around, I saw lots of shock and confusion.

I'm sure bands from Sonic Youth to the Doors have similarly surrendered their instruments to the feedback like this, so it was not an incredibly original moment.  But somehow, something was pulled off.  The pop ended and there was extra noise to go around, so that's what Mould ended with. And the trio filed offstage, leaving a bunch of staring eyes and ringing ears, waiting to hear if there was any pop left for another song, but settling for being bathed in Doxa.