The 1986 Listening Post - Husker Du - Candy Apple Grey

Husker Du - Candy Apple Grey

#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. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/candy-apple-grey/282973113

The 1985 Listening Post - Husker Du - Flip Your Wig

Husker Du - Flip Your Wig

#327/962

September 1 1985

Husker Du

Flip Your Wig

Genre: Alternative

5 out of 5

Highlights:

Flip Your Wig

Makes No Sense At All

Hate Paper Doll

Divide And Conquer

Private Plane

Keep Hanging On

The Wit and the Wisdom

Guitar solos? In a Husker Du song? Like…traditional guitar solos? That’s…unexpectedly weird. Not unwelcome. Just weird.

Maybe it was Spot, the producer, that I hated. Cuz I love this. I still think it’s produced by people who are under some influence. Everything is flat but that’s the droning sound that is Du, I guess. 

Punk songs, that sound like they’ve been violated by an injection of Pop (or maybe the reverse) results in great shit like “Hate Paper Doll” & “Green Eyes” (Because, as much as I like the first few tracks, once again, it’s the Hart song that cuts through the noise more than the others. Cuz He. Is. Better. Then. Mould.) A great example of this is the wail of mental instability that is Hart’s “Keep Hanging On”. You just know that guy isn’t gonna make it out of his 40s. 

Flip Your Wig is a poorly produced, muddled slab of brilliance. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/flip-your-wig/515394844

The 1985 Listening Post - Husker Du - New Day Rising

Husker Du - New Day Rising

#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. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/new-day-rising/515394889

The 1984 Listening Post - Husker Du - Zen Arcade

Husker Du - Zen Arcade

#172

July 1 1984

Husker Du

Zen Arcade

4.75 out of 5

Highlights:

Never Talking to You Again

What’s Going On

Pink Turns to Blue

Whatever

Turn on the News

Reoccurring Dreams

I think it’s time for me to just admit it. I don’t think I care for Husker Du. Okay. Not Du, per se, just Bob Mould. The fact that he, and not Grant Hart, has bent music critics to the belief that Mould is the musical genius after he has trashed Hart, ran over Grant with his disdain and then Hart died after creating some of the best barely heralded alternative records in the biz. 

Mould’s songs sound like they are recorded by someone who knows his voice sucks so he buries it under layers of mixes. It’s as though he is so insecure with who he is that he is embarrassed that what he really wants to do is write dance music for clubs (this is a true thing, btw). 

I know ZA is heralded for its diversity but I feel like that diversity comes from Hart’s influence and contributions not Mould’s. Case in point everything that leads up to “What’s Going On”, which sounds at first like thrash metal but is really a garage rock cum punk outing and a compelling one at that. 

It’s on the middle of Side Two right through Side Three that everything seems to come together and that, I believe, is because Grant is the co-writer on all of those tracks. I even like the Mould tracks but I do wish he was better mixed, especially the Beatles Revolution #9 weirdness of “The Tooth Fairy and the Princess”.

But the real gem here is (again) Hart’s brilliant punk/alternative manifesto, “Turn on the News”, a groovy, assertive, melodic garage rock piece that calls to mind all that came before (Radio Birdmen, Iggy and the Stooges) and after (early Hellacopters).

It’s the 13 minute Jazz/Metal hybrid that truly amazes, though. 

It’s well documented that this album was recorded and mixed in about 80 hours. If only they had taken more time and gotten a producer…who am I kidding? This would still be the era classic it has been regarded. 

The biggest travesty in the annals of punk rock history is that, while Husker Du has been lauded as an innovator and influencer, without Grant Hart, Bob Mould remains some schmuck in Minnesota who loves the Ramones and ends up with some cubicle job, playing bad punk on the side. 

The 1983 Listening Post - Husker Du - Everything Falls Apart & Metal Circus

Husker Du - Everything Falls Apart & Metal Circus

#185 & #186

October 1983

Husker Du

Everything Falls Apart & Metal Circus EP

Everything Falls Apart

3.5 out of 5

Metal Circus

3.75 out of 5

I’m doing these together because I’ve never really given Husker Du their due (he he he) aside from a handful of songs and Warehouse, which is their most poppy and therefore the only one I really ever listened to. Cuz I suck that way. Also because Everything Falls Apart in its original form is sort of an EP anyway.

Everything Falls Apart

Here’s my hot take:

Grant Hart was the better songwriter than Bob Mould, pound for pound and Everything Falls Apart helps prove that inasmuch as it’s 90% Mould (and just a lot of junkpunk ala DKs who were melding punk with surf rock so it was palatable while being angry as hell. I’d recommend their cover od Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” but it’s standard issue speed punk chorus. I kind of think that’s not Mould on lead vocals, it’s a little higher than he usually is and also more melodic. But, it doesn’t deserve highlighting.

Hart doesn’t have much in the way of contribution until “Wheels”, which isn’t great, but does serve a bass driven change of pace from Mould’s thrashing.

They would do so much better and soon. Go listen to Minor Threat or Black Flag if you wanna hear this stuff done better.

https://itunes.apple.com/…/everything-falls-apart/1249140194

Metal Circus

Highlights:

It’s Not Funny Anymore

Diane

Out on a Limb

Metal Circus is almost the same length as Everything so…maybe they should be looked at 2 halves of the same coin. Circus opens a lot angrier, if that’s even possible, then the previous record. There is an attempt at musicality on “Real World” that cut through for me. The primal screaming of Mould’s almost elevates “Deadly Skies” to classic hardcore level. But it’s when we to low-fi garage rock of “It’s Not Funny Anymore” that I find myself appreciating the band. And, lo and behold…that’s Hart.

Mould’s guitars are lacerating but ultimately leave me wanting as does most of the record…

Until…

Diane.

Unlike anything I’ve heard from Husker Du, this one hurts. It’s terrifying. It’s like Lisa Germano’s “A Psychopath” in its horror.

Rock History has been written and Bob Mould has come out the winner of the “who is one of the most important voices in punk music” battle. But it was Grant Hart who knew how to cut to the heart of punk’s emotional core. And he paid for it with drug addiction and marginalization. But, sorry, Bob. It was Grant all along.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/metal-circus/515536188