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Hi-Fi Indy in our city’s Fountain Square district.
Dateline Saturday, May 10, 2025 — Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife Anne and I share a lot of important commonalities, but one of our smaller Venn diagrams is “musical preferences”. Nearly everyone I know with similar tastes lives in other states, and even that is a Post-It list. Therefore I can either attend concerts alone, attend only when Anne wants to (which has happened exactly once in twenty years of marriage), make new friends to attend concerts with [sigh], or never experience live music again. Once every several years, I let option A win and commit to a one-man night on the town.
My last concert over six years ago was fun and mentally invigorating, yet physically debilitating and emotionally isolating whenever the bands weren’t playing and I could dwell on my loner-in-a-crowd status. For years I thought it might be My Very Last Concert, especially during the COVID era. Six years later, here I go again for a new episode of “Is This My Very Last Concert?” Our star attraction is one of my all-time favorite musicians: indie rock legend Bob Mould — singer/guitarist with the influential Minneapolis hardcore/punk trio Hüsker Dü and leader of the short-lived power-pop follow-up act Sugar. He’s now touring to promote his fifteenth solo album Here We Go Crazy, which was released this past March and has been in heavy rotation in my car’s CD player on and off ever since. (It’s still so new, as of this writing Wikipedia has yet to bother covering it.)
I’d seen Mould live once before, back in 2005 at The Vogue in Broad Ripple, near the end of its long run as a beloved trendy neighborhood. Mould was on a solo tour in support of his sixth album Body of Song, with an emphasis on “solo” — as in, no other musicians, just himself and his guitars onstage. The acoustic half of the set was a treat; when he switched to electric for the back half, it was…well, still Mould and interesting in a way I’d never heard done, but felt incomplete and Just Not The Same. He returned to Indy a few years ago, this time playing Hi-Fi Indy, a smaller venue in the Fountain Square neighborhood, but it was too soon after the pandemic and it was my understanding he was purely solo again. A clerk at Half-Price Books, one of the precious few fans I’ve ever met in person outside a show, nearly talked me into going. Very tempting, but I passed.
Fast-forward to 2025: Mould apparently loved the Hi-Fi so much that he returned this past Saturday night. This time he wasn’t alone: along for the ride were bassist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster, the ace rhythm team for all his solo albums from 2012’s Silver Age to the present. The trio has now been recording together longer than the lifespans of Hüsker Dü and Sugar combined. They were the value-added incentive I needed for an encore. I bought a ticket the day they went on sale. Good thing I did; the show eventually sold out. I was even enthusiastic enough to overpay in advance for reserve parking across the street, though it doesn’t feel quite so expensive if you’re a frequent comic-con attendee who’s used to Chicago’s exorbitant garage prices. I figured it was worth the peace of mind to skip searching for a free space several blocks away.
When weighing the pros and cons of whether or not to go for it, it was tough to top the “cons” list with “I’m getting old” considering Mould is 64 and still at it, top-volume and full-speed. When I realized I’m older now than Mould was when I saw him back in ’05, I could feel myself crumbling into dust. I went for it anyway. You never know when any given concert might be your last chance to see your favorite artist live. (Case in point: the band I saw back in 2018 broke up four years later and their opening act broke up a month after them.)
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Parking lot art.
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The other side of Virginia Avenue across from the Hi-Fi. In the middle is Square Cat Vinyl, which I need to check out someday. Every street felt like Broad Ripple thirty years ago.
I’d never been to the Hi-Fi and in fact rarely visit Fountain Square. I once visited their rather cool comic shop, but got lost trying to find my way out of the area. I once had dinner at a fantastic Greek restaurant that later burned down. I was once invited there for a round of duck-pin bowling but left without stopping because I couldn’t find any parking spaces except next to manned police cars. Strictly speaking, this evening was my best Fountain Square experience yet, unless Milktooth a couple blocks northwest counts, but I think that’s technically a separate neighborhood.
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One of their collections of load-bearing band stickers.
The concert was scheduled at 8:30. Doors opened at 7:30. I pulled up shortly after 7 and joined the line behind a couple who’d driven in from Cincinnati, one of whom had seen Mould five times previously up in Chicago. The line flowed inside on time and I passed their two checkpoints with flying colors — one for my ticket, one for my ID to prove I’m old enough to drink and my gray hairs aren’t fake. They’re serious about checking for IDs — the graybeard in front of me had an expired ID and was therefore denied the official “ok to serve” bracelet. Presumably they gave him a differently colored one labeled “Suspected Teen”.
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I don’t even drink. This disposable souvenir was wasted on me.
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The stage before the show, with two bands’ worth of equipment set up.
I staked out an empty spot on the sticky hardwood floor near the stage and kept myself occupied by alternating between doomscrolling, texting Anne, staring off into space, and finding different places to space-stare so I wouldn’t accidentally space-stare directly at anyone. The house playlist blared from the main speakers for background noise, though the only tune I recognized without using Shazam was Liz Phair’s “Never Said”.
The opening act fired up their stacks at 8:30 sharp, a bruising punk trio called the J. Robbins Band. Their eponymous frontman was in past bands I’ve heard of (Government Issue, Jawbox) and others I haven’t. Joining him were War on Women guitarist Brooks Harlan on bass, and drummer Peter Moffett, who played with Robbins in Government Issue and Burning Airlines. Their strident rage hammerlocked with a tightness far above the baseline opening-act adequacy I’m used to in my paltry experience.
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The J Robbins Band. (CAUTION: my attempted band pics largely suck.)
Some of their set was drawn from their 2024 album Basilisk, including standouts like “A Ray of Sunlight” and “Last War”; a few others (“Anodyne”, “Soldier On”), from their 2019 debut Un-Becoming. A partially prerecorded trance-rock interlude kinda petered out, but everything else sounded far superior live. Robbins was especially outraged during a new number called “Dear Leader”, about the improbable yet absolutely true trivia that he has to share his June 14th birthday with a certain politician who recently ordered his underlings to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on his party, like a power-mad Peter Brady.
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My least worst shot of J. Robbins himself.
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Brooks Harlan, much nearer to me. These pics could’ve been worse; I’d just upgraded to a new phone the day before.
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Drummers are always impossible for us amateur photogs to capture, but please enjoy this accidentally loving shot of two of Peter Moffett’s five cymbals.
Eleven songs ran to 9:07. The crew and the Band knew their routine, together taking precisely thirty minutes to clear all their gear offstage. The Bob Mould Band launched ferociously from the get-go with a one-two Silver Age punch of “Star Machine” and “The Descent” (one of Mould’s best-ever), pedaled-to-the-metal with the newer two-minute piledriver “Neanderthal”, and rarely let up the pressure. Together as a single pummeling force they focused on the business of pure rocking out with almost no stage banter whatsoever. Seventeen songs rocketed by before Mould finally paused to thank Robbins & Co., to introduce Narducy and Wurster per concert custom, and to warn us the next two songs were off the new album, not that that has to be a bad thing.
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The Bob Mould Band, left to right: Jason Narducy, Jon Wurster’s hair, Mould.
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My kingdom for a camera smart enough to realize you’re in an audience and will auto-focus on what’s beyond their heads, not on the heads themselves.
Despite the intense energy level, the front of the audience, for their part, wasn’t especially into moving ’round a whole lot. I’ve only witnessed two mosh pits in my life, but this definitely wasn’t that kind of show. It’s not like all of us were middle-agers. Quite a few folks were obviously born after Dü’s demise, but those hardy few of us who felt any urge to move around, bounce, or old-school pogo were outnumbered by polite, motionless listeners who might as well have been in auditorium chairs at Clowes Hall. I dunno how many were older or creakier than me, or if it was just that everyone was scared of spilling their precious drinks. Maybe they were bound and determined to get the most out of their paper bracelets even if it meant sacrificing any and all forms of motion remotely resembling dance moves.
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Least worst shot of Narducy.
Most of the set drew from five of Mould’s last six solo albums, skipping Sunshine Rock, whose uncharacteristically shiny-happy demeanor sounds even weirder amid his catalog now than it did at the time. Sugar was omitted entirely, as was all his pre-Narducy/Wurster solo era (condolences to Workbook diehards and relief to anyone who bought Modulate). A few middle-of-album songs that hadn’t really stood out to me before thrived out of context and in a more spontaneous stage environment, such as “Black Confetti” and the new album’s “Fur Mink Augurs”, which built to an epic finish with Mould windmilling like Pete Townsend. A few other mid-tempo buzzsaw quickies felt soundalike strung together, but at the very least they sustained the tempo. Predictably, the fans responded most fervently to the ’80s oldies, including two nods to his old bandmate, the late Grant Hart. Narducy and Wurster channeled ye olde Hüsker-bluster most reverently on “Celebrated Summer”, to the delight of us olds and to anyone who’s since discovered New Day Rising, which turned 40 this year.
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Mould during the quiet bridge of “Celebrated Summer”.
Bob Mould’s complete Indianapolis 2025 set list, 27 songs in 78 minutes:
- Star Machine
- The Descent
- Neanderthal
- Here We Go Crazy
- You Need to Shine
- Fur Mink Augurs
- The Ocean
- Daddy’s Favorite
- Black Confetti
- Next Generation
- American Crisis
- Fireball
- Forecast of Rain
- I Don’t Know You Anymore
- You Say You
- Never Talking to You Again
- Celebrated Summer
- Hard to Get
- When Your Heart is Broken
- The War
- Flip Your Wig
- Siberian Butterfly
- Losing Time
- Hate Paper Doll
- Something I Learned Today
- Love Is All Around (a.k.a. The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme, that blessed Minneapolis staple)
- Makes No Sense at All
Admittedly I’d courted spoilers and checked setlist.fm days ahead to get a sense of what to expect. At all shows earlier in May they’d kept the first 23 tracks identical, then swapped the final four in and out. Philly fans got “I Apologize”; Boston and NYC were treated to “Chartered Trips”; and so on. I was perfectly happy with our quartet finale to what was apparently one of their shorter overall sets, wrapping up around 10:55. On my way out, I was surprised the merchandise table had T-shirts left in my uncommon size and had to grab that souvenir. Having otherwise made zero new acquaintances, I excused myself and left everyone to their ensuing discussion groups inside and out on the sidewalk.
I went home with that shirt, the above pics (plus a couple dozen rejects), and one other keepsake that’s hopefully more temporary, one last reminder of my advancing years: the unwelcome return of my old nemesis tinnitus, piercing my right ear through the entire drive home at about the same pitch as the feedback segue between Sugar’s “Come Around” and “Tilted”. Sunday morning it had downgraded to the Doppler-squalling end of Snow Patrol’s “Chocolate”. By the end of Mother’s Day church service it had further settled down to A Test of the Emergency Broadcast System. It’s now Sunday night and it’s subdued enough for our room fans to cover it, but it’s lurking and lingering. I trust the happy memories of the evening will outlast this side effect.
…or will they? Find out in our next overlong episode of “Is This My Very Last Concert?”, not yet scheduled anytime in the near future…but I’m not saying this is The End, either.
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Mould bids Indy farewell. Hopefully he’ll return!