After drawing up blueprints for American pop-punk's future with Hüsker Dü in the 1980s, guitarist/singer-songwriter Mould claimed he'd never play its swift-kicking hard-core classics after that trio's breakup.

Then came a series of successful solo efforts - electric, acoustic - and those of his melodious, power-popping trio Sugar throughout the 1990s, and in 2002, Mould dropped the rock for electronic music.

Yet here Mould was, Friday night at the Trocadero, bashing out Husker Du's harmony-filled "Celebrated Summer" at breakneck speed, along with cranky solo tunes from his abrasive new CD, District Line, and a klatch of bracing Sugar tracks.

Mould proved he could bring the rock whenever he felt like it - very loud, very hard and very fast.

Mould and the rest of his quartet downright careened through Sugar's raving "A Good Idea" and "Hoover Dam" - their crisp harmonies and ooh-ahh choruses rendered more brutally than originally, but with their delicate beauty still present.

Looking leaner than ever, with patches of gray peeking through his beard, Mould skulked across the stage. He pummeled through the rabid chords of a sprightly "Paralyzed" and crunched his way through the blues bluster of "Hanging Tree," all with his reedy singing voice and lonely yearning lyrics intact. While the tweet that infected Sugar's sweetness was in effect through a solo - Mould's edgy take on "See a Little Light" - it was gone when it came to his stark, new "Again and Again."

"Watch me walk the ledge, I am comfortable out here by myself," he sang slowly.

But slow wasn't the order of the night - not from the revved and spiraling noise pop of "I Am Vision, I Am Sound," and not from the spiky pogo-ing Hüsker Dü treasure "I Apologize."

With his crew harmonizing through its phonetic "ah-pol-o-gize" chorus and his guitar set to stun, you couldn't help but be cheery - Bob Mould had rebuilt all his bridges.