Once upon a time, not so very long ago, central London had a thriving, thrilling, fertile and ever-evolving live music scene located at the northern end of Charing Cross Road. A plectrum flick or three from Regent Sound Studio on Denmark Street, where Black Sabbath recorded their debut album in a single day in 1969, venues such as The Borderline, The Astoria, The LA2/Mean Fiddler and The 12 Bar, played host to everyone from Adele to Kyuss, Oasis to Nine Inch Nails, Therapy? to U2. For 25 years, across literally hundreds of gigs, I spent some of the happiest, messiest, most exhilarating nights of my life in this tiny sector of the capital, and the printable memories of those nights would fill a two-volume book.
Now, in the name of 'progress', each one of those venues has been destroyed. In their place, the area is dominated by the crass “billion-pound immersive media, music and culture district” that is Outernet London, a hideous, high-tech carbuncle featuring 360-degree 'walk-in' advertising billboards, brain-numbing 'brand content' for gawping tourists, gated private streets with professionally polite security teams, a boutique hotel with original Sex Pistols graffiti behind protective glass, and sterile, state-of-the-art 'performance spaces', including - tunnelled beneath what was once the 12 Bar - The Lower Third, a basement venue that is a property developer's idea of a dive bar, deigned to deliver a safe, sanitised 'live experience' as opposed to a sweat-soaked gig.
No-one wants to watch bands while standing in puddles of piss, vomit, blood, broken teeth and stale lager, but really, is this how anyone wants their favourite music served up? If so, kill me now. Thankfully, however, the music showcased here tonight is authentic, passionate and capable of changing lives in a manner that bullshit 'content hubs' like this never, ever will.
The run of songs with which Bob Mould closes his 45 minutes onstage at this solo electric showcase promoted by Rough Trade is When Your Heart Is Broken, Hüsker Dü's Celebrated Summer, Sugar's Hoover Dam, Siberian Butterfly and Hüsker Dü's Makes No Sense At All. Forty years separates the first and last of these compositions - When Your Heart Is Broken is a highpoint of Mould's excellent new Here We Go Crazy album, released on March 7, Makes No Sense At All from August 1985's classic Flip Your Wig - but all five are superb examples of Mould's superior, heart-on-sleeve songwriting.
No other artist from the Our Band Could Be Your Life generation is continuing to consistently put out records as vital as Here We Go Crazy (and its predecessors, 2019's Sunshine Rock and 2020's Blue Hearts), and one senses that the vast majority of those packed into this 200-capacity club have been with Mould on every step of his journey. If, as Mould himself has suggested, Here We Go Crazy, his 15th solo album, is the sound of the 64-year singer/songwriter giving the people what they want - "simple songs… really straightforward… very relatable” - his standards never dip, as evidenced here by raucous blasts through Neanderthal and Hard To Get. Mould's new record pivots around the idea of finding joy in simple, sourceable pleasures during a time when the world is on fire, and tonight is one such night, with one man and his faithful, battered Fender Strat transcending this setting and elevating and transporting every troubled soul here in a manner that only the best music is capable of doing.
Bob Mould will be back in London with his band in November, and in America and Europe later this year: treasure this man while you can, and treat yourself to a night in his company at the earliest possible opportunity.
Read more about Here We Go Crazy here.
