#96/1263
March 17 1986
Husker Du
Candy Apple Grey
Genre: Alternative
4.5 out of 5
Highlights:
Don’t Want to Know if You Are Lonely
Sorry Somehow
Too Far Down
Hardly Getting Over It
No Promise Have I Made
I’m writing this note before I sit down to listen to this album. Now, I’ve heard this record but never paid attention to who wrote what but Listening Posters will recall that I have a theory and I want to see if that’s borne out on this record.
Let’s dive in.
Candy opens with a blistering track that sounds, to me, like a screamo metal band covering Sonic Youth. Then does a hard left turn to something more accessible and melodic, “Don’t Want to Know if You Are Lonely”. It’s interesting that I should be listening to this album at this point in time cuz I recently got on a mid-00s pop punk jag. Bowling for Soup, Teen Machine, We The Kings, Blink 182, Green Day, Fountains of Wayne, Nerf Herder. My son really likes it (especially “Girl That All The Bad Guys Want”) and, listening to this track, I hear all of that. Faster than expected rock bed coupled with percussive assertion and introspectively beta male lyrics. Am I right? Is this stuff the bedrock for a style that will take over the airwaves in 2 decades?
After that, we get the droning nasal vocals and melody similar to earlier Du songs. It’s not “bad” but it’s uninspired and too familiar.
And, after thinking, yes, I’ve been proven right again: Grant Hart is the real genius here, Bob Mould is a one trick pony that got a lot of credit and has a really good PR firm behind him…”Too Far Down”.
If this album could have just been that single, dayenu. All of Grunge can be traced to this song. Do NOT listen to it on a bad day.
But that’s okay, cuz you can turn the record over and listen to Mould’s let out more blood on “Hardly Getting Over It” and if you don’t want to kill yourself at this point, you sure want to find Bob and give him a hug and tell him it’s all gonna be okay, man.
This is the first time I feel like Mould might be up to his reputation.
Hard to imagine that this was the band’s first major label release. Something was changing at record labels and we were all better for it…for a while.
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