#16
January 31 1985
Husker Du
New Day Rising
Genre: Punk/Alt
4.25 out of 5
Highlights:
New Day Rising
Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hell
I Apologize
Terms of Psychic Warfare
The blood letting on the opening title track suggests Husker Du isn’t finished with the opus they started on Zen Arcade.
The production on New Day Rising is lacking but that’s part of its charm. It’s a sonic assault where the vocals (and everything else) are slashing through the thicket of guitars which themselves are an army of machetes engaged in a battle for the listener’s soul. Hart’s terrifically cinematic “Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill” is a great example of this as is “If I Told You”.
There are weak points. All provided by Mould, of course. “Perfect Example” and “59 Times the Pain” sound like he took some musical beds and went into the studio at 3AM, worried that someone might change his mind, he set all the mics at the wrong level and recorded his vocals directly on to the tape so they couldn’t be erased. It’s almost as if he’ proud of how unintelligible and muddied they are.
It’s “Terms of Psychic Warfare” & “Books About UFOS” that cements it for me: Hart is Dylan to Mould’s…whatever Mould says he is. Bob is thrashing away and one song bleeds into the next but Grant is trying something different on his tracks. This one track could also be Ian Hunter. or Neil Young. All of them draped and dripping in punk rock robes.
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