• Land Speed Record (1981)
• Everything Falls Apart (1982)
• Metal Circus (1983)
• Zen Arcade (1984)
• New Day Rising (1985)
• Flip Your Wig (1985)
• Candy Apple Grey (1986)
• Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987)

Land Speed Record ( 1981 )

6

All Tensed Up / Don't Try to Call / I'm Not Interested / Guns at My School / Push the Button / Gilligan's Island / MTC / Don't Have a Life / Bricklayer / Tired of Doing Things / You're Naive / Strange Week / Do the Bee / Big Sky / Ultracore / Let's Go Die / Data Control

A 26-minute blast of fury and anger. A non-stop barrage of uncontrolled emotion. Hüsker Dü's Land Speed Record is a live album that trashes mercilessly along for less than half an hour. It contains seventeen (17!) songs that are glued to each other Ramones-style, one song's fading out chord being the first chord of the next.As a full-throttle assault it's nearly incomparable, but as a collection of songs it seems rather flawed. While some songs may have recognisable hooks and clever lyrics, the horrible sound obliterates our chances of ever finding that out. Most of the songs ("I'm Not Interested," "Guns At My School," "Strange Week," "Big Sky") just sound very similar, as you only hear crashing drums and cymbals, rumbling bass and a guitar that's being controlled by an insane maniac.

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Everything Falls Apart ( 1982 )

6.5

From the Gut / Blah Blah Blah / Punch Drunk / Bricklayer / Afraid of Being Wrong / Sunshine Superman / Signals From Above / Everything Falls Apart / Wheels / Target / Obnoxious / Gravity / Statues / Amusement / In a Free Land / What Do I Want? / M.I.C.

Not as fast, aggressive or messy as Land Speed Record, but still a far cry from their mid-eighties masterpieces, Everything Falls Apart finds the golden Minneapolis trio refining their hardcore punk and adding psychedelic influences (the band seems to be fond of The Byrds’ sonic experiments, and two years later they would record a superior version of “Eight Miles High”) and pop melodies. Well, not in all the songs, just here and there.“Punch Drunk” and “Bricklayer” (both clock in under 35 seconds) are unbelievably fast and furious punk songs, featuring some maniacally screamed vocals, raving music and short twisted guitar solos.

Other instances of their manic intensity are the hostile “Obnoxious” (“You don’t like the way we look, obnoxious, you don’t like the way we talk, obnoxious, you can all go get fucked, obnoxious”), and the awesome “Signals from Above,” which starts with some chaotic guitar feedback and pummeling bass and drums, but soon develops into a galloping monster of a song that obliterates everything on its path. Elsewhere, the band starts infusing their torrential noise bursts with small amounts of poppy elements. “From the Gut,” “Blah Blah Blah,” “Afraid of Being Wrong,” “Wheels,” and “Target” are definitely loud and aggressive shards of noise, but somehow they already betray elements that would become more prominent (unless you limit yourself to listening James Taylor albums, then even these songs might get you a heart attack). All these songs add elements that don’t fit in “classic” hardcore, whether it’s a psychedelic guitar sound (“Wheels”), a twisted guitar solo (“From the Gut,” in which it seems as if Mould tries to combine Greg Ginn-styled chaos and late 60’s melodicism), or backing vocals (“Blah Blah Blah” and “Target,” with Bob Mould spitting out “You’ve seen it all before, you think it’s passing, but you listen to the same fucking records every single day”).The band also hesitantly leaves the hardcore ingredients behind on the title track (which they never rigidly followed in the first place, as they were more concerned with conviction and energy than with a narrow-minded set of rules), a (*gasp*) poppy punk song that might have been on Flip Your Wig, and the equally catchy “Gravity,” that also boasts a conventional guitar solo. Grant Hart probably was the most pop-oriented songwriter in the band. He not only sang (and in this band the one who wrote the song usually sings it) the psychedelica-tinged “Wheels,” but also a fine cover version of “Sunshine Superman,” a song by British bard Donovan.The short album (12 songs, 19 minutes) also adds the band’s first two singles: “Statues”/”Amusement” (1980) and “In a Free Land”/ “M.I.C” (1982) (the back cover also mentions a track called “What Do I Want?”, but it does not appear on the CD) that are interesting. “Amusement,” a live track that is a bit too long isn’t anything special, but the Hart-sung “Statues” is, combining wavery guitar feedback, a catchy and repetitive bass line, and some chicken scratch-guitar during the chorus (funk? what the hell?). The second single, “In a Free Land” shows that the band was also clearly inspired by the Ramones, while “M.I.C.” is a politically aware hardcore rant.A transitional album that has the band hesitating between all-out hardcore and more melodic material, Everything Fall Apart might be too noisy for those who want their first taste of Hüsker Dü, but it might it might be your thing after you have purchased (and like) their acclaimed mid-period albums Zen Arcade, New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig, which, although still indebted to their early loud stuff (and certainly the first album contains some very harsh songs), reach unbelievable heights by adding more elements from pop and folk.Note: There is a version of this album around (see also cover photo) called Everything Falls Apart and More, which has these songs, but adds a longer version of “Statues,” and old stuff “Let’s Go Die” and “Do You Remember?”. That edition also has the songs separated, and not programmed as one 32 minutes-long track, like my (Wild Angel) edition is.

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Metal Circus

7

Real World / Deadly Skies / It’s Not Funny Anymore / First of the Last Calls / Lifeline / Diane / Out on a Limb

A 7-song ep that for the most part expands on the melodic hardcore punk of Everything Falls Apart, Metal Circus nevertheless has some interesting songs. Five of the songs (“Real World,” “Deadly Skies,” “First of the Last Calls,” “Lifeline,” “Out on a Limb”) basically still are raging hardcore songs, but some have already have New Day Rising-guitars (“Real World,” “Deadly Skies”), others just speed ahead, but in a more accessible way now. Despite the increase of melodic ingredients, Bob Mould still ‘sings’ as if his life depends on it. Thematically these songs offer nothing new, touching upon topics such as nuclear danger (“Deadly Skies”), indifference (“Real World,” “It’s Not Funny Anymore”), addiction (“First of the Last Calls”), and life’s inadequacy (“Lifeline”). The songs sung by Grant Hart are easily the best ones on this release. “It’s Not Funny Anymore” is essentially pop played as punk and features a great melody and some catchy guitar playing (reminding me of the Buzzcocks’ “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays”). The epicentre of the album, however, is Hart’s first great song, “Diane.”

Essential listening for any Hüsker Dü-fan, but also the first of their released that might appeal to a broader audience, mainly on the strength of “Diane,” Metal Circus only has one bad song (“Out on a Limb,” and doesn’t that riff sound like “Beat It”?), a handful of good ones and one stand-out track, but ultimately will go down in music history books as “the release that preceded Zen Arcade.”

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Zen Arcade ( 1984 )

10

Something I Learned Today / Broken Home, Broken Heart / Never Talking to You Again / Chartered Trips / Dreams Reoccurring / Indecision Time / Hare Krsna / Beyond the Threshold / Pride / I’ll Never Forget You / The Biggest Lie / What’s Going On / Masochism World / Standing by the Sea / Somewhere / One Step at a Time / Pink Turns to Blue / Newest Industry / Monday Will Never Be the Same / Whatever / The Tooth Fairy and the Princess / Turn On the News / Reoccurring Dreams

1984.David Bowie releases Tonight, the Rolling Stones released Undercover the previous year, Steely Dan and Roxy Music had disbanded in the meantime. Suffice it to say that most of the rock icons/innovators of the 70’s were going through hard times. Even the bands that were supposed to save rock music from pomposity and superficiality at the end of that decade, like The Clash, The Police, Talking Heads, were becoming clones of their former selves, and on the verge of splitting up (the first two), or just not exciting anymore (the last one). New, stylised, innovatively clad pop icons (Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna) were storming both the singles and the album charts and – so it seemed – driving rock music into a corner (an exception that comes to mind is Springsteen, although his Born In the U.S.A. was decidedly more pop-oriented than his previous work). It was a transitional era that saw the rise of new future giants (U2, R.E.M.) and loads of recycled waste.

Like so many bands of the era (The Wipers, Mission of Burma, The Dream Syndicate, etc.), the band preferred toying around with a maximum of decibels in the beginning, releasing two albums of incensed punk and an EP that tended to go in a slightly different direction. The result of their ongoing musical experimentation and refinement (although some might argue they never refined anything) is this 70-minute long double album, released in the same year as SST’s other seminal double album by The Minutemen. Both albums are a culmination of what the respective bands had reached thus far, with a lot of new ingredients added, but were ultimately more than the sum of their respective parts. Certainly Zen Arcade, with which the Minneapolis trio proved they were no longer a hardcore punk band (despite the fact that the album is very loud), went further than anyone could have imagined. The early influences like 60’s psychedelica, folk and classic rock are given more prominence, resulting in an exhausting and schizophrenic, but even more so, an impressively sprawling and challenging album. And it looks like it’s a concept album, too! Well, I honestly didn’t find a storyline that links all the songs together (although I found (or created?) a thematic unity that I’ll mention later), but the majority of the songs seem concerned with the trials and tribulations of an unnamed protagonist growing up, discovering the world, experiencing (broken) relationships, and more. A bit like The Who’s lauded double album Quadrophenia (1973) - but with balls.The hardcore ferocity of the previous releases isn’t gone, but the amount of songs that are fast and loud on this album is rather limited (about one third of the songs). The sound of the guitars, on the other hand, has no limits at all: I have heard many people complain about the sound of this album (or the sound of all Hüsker Dü-albums), but in my opinion this is one of the most powerfully produced albums ever (a job handled by the band itself, aided by legendary producer Spot (producer/engineer on albums by Black Flag, the Minutemen, Meat Puppets, etc.)) when it comes to guitar sounds. They don’t rock, jangle or cajole. The guitar scorches, raves, thrashes and knocks you off your feet. The album opens with “Something I Learned Today”, which is introduced by precise but weird drums, rumbling bass and then that typical, grating guitar sound (if you can’t imagine what it sounds like, take your copy of Nirvana’s Nevermind and listen to the beginning of “Territorial Pissings”, which resembles this sound). Immediately following the opener comes “Broken Home, Broken Heart,” one of several songs dealing with a dysfunctional family. This song also has a great guitar solo at the end, and another noteworthy thing is the fact that Grant Hart doesn’t seem to pound those drums really hard: no matter how loud the song is, the drums remain subdued, going calmly along without losing control. “Indecision Time” has a guitar sound you almost could compare to a swarm of delirious bees. Mould really spits out lines like “Questions like a candle that’s burning at both ends, never find an answer that fits in your plans.” Then listen to the scorching assault of “Beyond the Threshold,” and try to convince me this isn’t where Pearl Jam found their riff for “Spin the Black Circle.” The lyrical matter (the horror of an urban wasteland) and muffled vocals (apart from the “Beyooooond the threshold”-screams) are a nice contrast to “Pride”, perhaps the single most intense song on the album. The energy and conviction Mould injects in his performance is dazzling, and the fact that the band keeps its focus in a song so filled with emotion, anger, and disillusion is plain astonishing. That the band is capable of maintaining that energy-level during the next two songs, combined with the knowledge that these songs are all first takes, is further proof of the fact that the band almost didn’t have any limits at the time. “I’ll Never Forget You” is a gut-wrenching farewell letter to a former friend/lover (“Told you everything I knew about me, didn’t listen to a word I say, spill my guts, you just threw them away”), and “The Biggest Lie” – with its steadily accelerating intro (remember Black Flag's "Six Pack," anyone?) – is another raving lesson in disillusionment (“You trade your respect for no success, you tried to be a hero, but you end up nothing”). Finally, the album’s most traditional ‘punk rock’ song (or is it hard rock?) is probably the anthemic “Turn On the News.” It’s introduced by thirty seconds of TV-noises in the background, and then a crunching guitar suddenly falls in and Hart starts singing his tale of a society gone astray (“I hear it everyday on the radio, somebody shoots a guy he don’t even know, airplanes are falling out of the sky, a baby is born and another one dies”), and it’s of course a story of all times. Rarely has a disappointment in modern day society resulted in such a riveting song, however, as the song rocks and Hart’s passionate singing never lets up. The middle part, with the monkey noises and the galloping guitar, is as thrilling as it gets and prepares for the tensed climax (listen to the Rob Halford-imitation there!).While all the fast and loud songs were written by Bob Mould, he and Hart both contribute some more accessible songs. “Chartered Trips,” despite the overall distortion (it’s hard to tell who actually sings the song), can certainly be qualified as power pop with a harsh punk edge. Tracks like “Newest Industry” (a song set in the future that’s a chilling reflection of contemporary reality), “Somewhere” and “Whatever” (dealing with isolation, misunderstanding, generation clashes), are melodic rock songs that roll ahead at maximum distortion. Hart’s songs are even more poignant: “What’s Going On” (recycled in the Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979”?) and “Standing By the Sea” are two haunting tracks that delve into harrowing subjects such as solitude and insecurity, the latter injected with a big dose of melancholy. Another remarkable tune is the Mould co-written “Masochism World,” with a unison attack (fittingly) imitating the cracks of a whip, and once again it stresses the concern with pain (both active and passive), a primary theme of the album. The music is powerful, the coolest thing being the acceleration after a false ending. Two of the album’s heavyweights, however, are “Never Talking to You Again” and “Pink Turns to Blue,” perhaps the icing on the Zen cake. “Never,” like Mould’s “I’ll Never Forget You,” is a farewell message, but whereas Mould used every grain of emotion and loads of decibels to express his indignation, Hart opts for a sparse acoustic guitar to support his cool declaration: “There are things that I’d like to say, but I’m never talking to you again, there’s things I’d like to phrase some way, but I’m never talking to you again.” With a minimum of resources and an ultra-short song (1:39), Hart succeeds in conveying more emotion than many artists can muster on an entire album. The last great Hart track on the album is “Pink Turns to Blue,” one of the most terribly beautiful songs I’ve ever heard about drug abuse. Instead of simply telling that a girlfriend died of a drug overdose, Hart chooses imagery such as the title and the final verse “No more rope and too much dope, she’s lying on the bed, angels pacing, gently placing roses ‘round her head.” Even the music, with touches of piano and backing vocals, almost sounds morbid, and Mould’s solo is as intensely sad as Hart’s story.

Besides a bunch of raving hardcore songs and mid-tempo rockers, the album also contains some experiments and filler songs that can be seen as short interludes linking up different sections. “Monday Will Never Be the Same” and “One Step At a Time” are two short (less than a minute) piano solos, “Hare Krsna” features those typically repetitive Krsna ‘lyrics’, and is mainly memorable because of the overwhelming ringing percussion, courtesy of Hart. “The Tooth Fairy and the Princess” is a dream-like instrumental (ok, there are some vocals, but they’re limited to muted “Don’t give up, don’t let go, don’t give in, don’t let on,” while echoing guitar sounds come and go). Something awkward, and probably two of the most hated Hüsker Dü-tracks, are the short-ish “Dreams Reoccurring” and the lengthy album closer “Reoccurring Dreams.” In the first one, the band experiments with backwards effects, loads of distortion and feedback, and sudden accelerations and decelerations, while the second one builds on that, turning it into a monstrous feedback-fest that’s hard to take.The album covers several themes, the most prominent of them being the experience of growing up and exploring the world, often combined with dysfunctional relationships (“Something I Learned Today,” “Pride,” “Whatever,” “Somewhere,” etc), break-ups (“Never Talking to You Again,” “I’ll Never Forget You,”), haunting pictures of a devastated world (“Beyond the Threshold,” “Newest Industry,” “Turn On the News”) and confusion in general (“Indecision Time,” “What’s Going On,” “Standing By the Sea”, etc). There’s an ongoing quest for security going on, a need for hope that isn’t fulfilled. The protagonist in “Something I Learned Today” lets us know that he learned something, but adds “Someone else’s rules, not mine.” Similarly, the idealistic character in “The Biggest Lie” tries to be a hero, but “ends up nothing.” A nice image of this is a line from “Standing By the Sea”: “The waves kept on repeating, each one crashing to the shore, and my footprints nowhere leading, as they disappeared once more.” The actions/intentions/hopes are useless from the beginning, but moreover, they are erased immediately afterwards by the weight that is brought upon us by life and relations. The sense of disappointment that permeates this album is almost unbearable.No matter how emotionally scarred the album’s characters are, the music on Zen Arcade remains convincingly confident. It is true that the music sometimes lacks a certain cohesion often found in albums lauded because of their focused brevity, but that was never the point of this album. Likewise, one could argue that the album is too long or that is contains filler (“Dreams Reoccurring,” “Reoccurring Dreams”), but I would never want to hear a shortened version of it. Like The Beatles’ White album, it shows the band at a transitional and experimental stage, and offers more than a glimpse of what the band was capable of at the time. That it also involves music that isn’t played by the rules and defies aesthetical rules is part of the package. In this case it’s the big picture that counts, and in my opinion it’s exciting, ambitious, intense, rewarding and, in the end - despite the disillusionment and disappointments that infuse many of the songs – life-affirming, and that’s the biggest compliment an album can get, right?

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New Day Rising ( 1985 )

9

New Day Rising / Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill / I Apologize / If I Told You / Celebrated Summer / Perfect Example / Terms of Psychic Warfare / 59 Times the Pain / Powerline / Books About UFO’s / I Don’t Know What You’re Talking About / How to Skin a Cat / Whatcha Drinkin’ / Plans I Make

Probably the most lauded of all Hüsker Dü-albums, New Day Rising delivers an amazing bunch of songs that draw from more easily accessible influences/genres (sixties-pop, folk). It is also a lot more digestible than the exhausting and sometimes depressing Zen Arcade. Not only lyrically are the songs a bit lighter (still not all that joyful, though), but also the sound differs a lot from the raging double album it followed. The guitar sounds like a dozen vacuum cleaners, while the drums sound thinner than thin, and only the bass seems quite ‘unharmed’ by the production. If a contemporary album would be given this production, it would probably be trashed, but somehow it works on this album, giving the music the sharp edge it became notorious for, because no matter how instantly memorable many of the melodies are, the frenetic energy this album exudes remains dominant.

Unfortunately, the second half of the album isn’t as consistent. There are some very good poppy songs, like Hart’s bouncy “Terms of Psychic Warfare,” which benefits from another clean bass melody, a melodic guitar solo, and falsetto backing vocals; and also Hart’s “Books About UFO’s,” the most traditional song on the album, a swinging (!) piece of rock ‘n roll with piano and lots of echo on the vocals. “59 Times the Pain” is a harsh but appealing song with sudden tempo shifts and accelerations, tormented singing by Mould, and gloomy lyrics (“Don’t want to live with myself, can’t live with what goes on, all I see is humiliation, I wish it was gone”), while “I Don’t Know What You’re Talking About” sounds like a louder and shorter version of “Perfect Example.” The remainder of the songs are what makes this album a frustrating listen. Instead of scattering the experiments all over the album (like on Zen Arcade, where they seemed to function as short interludes), this time the band decided to put the lesser tracks all at the end of the album. During “How to Skin a Cat,” Mould and Hart freak out while a conversational voice mumbles along steadily, the raging “Whatcha Drinkin’” could have been a song from Everything Falls Apart, and “Plans I Make” starts off with an impressive hardcore fury (and those guitars sound great), but never really evolves into a truly substantial song. It’s not that these tracks are really bad, but they certainly don’t live up to the built-up momentum of the songs that came before.New Day Rising is further proof of Hüsker Dü’s relentless experimentation and need for renewal. The majority of the album consists of terrific music that combines the structure and melodies of pop and folk songs with the ferocity and intensity of their earlier hardcore albums. Rarely had a band done anything like this before (any examples?), and while the band would go on refining their sound and make even more accessible albums, New Day Rising might very well be the most loved and consistent of their albums. It is a masterpiece of alternative guitar-oriented rock - if you discount the album’s last seven minutes.

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Flip Your Wig ( 1985 )

8.5

Flip Your Wig / Every Everything / Makes No Sense at All / Hate Paper Doll / Green Eyes / Divide and Conquer / Games / Find Me / The Baby Song / Flexible Flyer / Private Plane / Keep Hanging On / The Wit and the Wisdom / Don’t Know Yet

With their third album in a mere 14 months, Mould, Hart, and Norton continued an admirable string of albums. This time, however, they decided to produce the album themselves, without any interference from Spot, one of SST’s house-producers, who had co-produced their previous efforts. The result is an album that sounds more polished than New Day Rising, without losing all of its punch. The guitar sound won’t offend anyone any longer: for the first time they sound like real guitars, and not some sort of futuristic killing device or industrial vacuum cleaner. The drum sound, on the other hand, is still ridiculously flat, although a drummer was sitting in the producer’s seat. More than ever before, the album’s influences are traceable, the band’s debt to The Beatles and (especially) The Byrds is more obvious than ever. However, they didn’t forget to write another bunch of catchy and rocking tracks either.

A less satisfying fact about the album is the inclusion of a few lesser tracks, a problem that also marred New Day Rising. They create a bunch of good to great songs, usually put the best of them in the beginning of the album, and a few at the beginning of the second half. However, there are always a few lesser tracks at the end of the album. Both “The Wit and the Wisdom” and “Don’t Know Yet” are instrumentals, and both of them are nothing to write home about. The first is a quite loud psychedelic-sounding workout, while the latter sounds dreamier, with pummelling piano notes and backward tapes (or something similar). Neither of them becomes an actual song, and Hart’s solo effort, “The Baby Song,” is also just an annoying melody played on a slide whistle that can also hardly be called a song. Despite these recurring problems, the majority of Flip Your Wig’s songs prove that the band was still at the peak of their powers at the time, and seemed capable of creating great music with their fingers up their nose. The fact that they’d largely abandoned their former abrasiveness and aggression was no reason to slow down their production rate or quality. Even when working in a more classical frame, these guys released their third great album in a row, which proved they were one of the few bands that really mattered during the mid-eighties.

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Candy Apple Grey ( 1986 )

7.5

Crystal / Don’t Want to Know if You Are Lonely / I Don’t Know for Sure / Sorry Somehow / Too Far Down / Hardly Getting Over It / Dead Set on Destruction / Eiffel Tower High / No Promise Have I Made / All This I’ve Done for You

Largely recorded at the end of the year in which they released both New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig, Candy Apple Grey is the Hüskers’ shortest album since 1982’s Everything Falls Apart. It’s also the first of their albums that was distributed by a major company (Warner). At the time, they were one of the first indie bands to sign with a major label (bands like Sonic Youth, for instance, would do this 5 years later), so the album was anxiously anticipated by the band’s fan base, who were prepared for the worst thing imaginable. However, the result was far from a sell-out, but sounded like a logical evolution instead. Candy Apple Grey sounds very much like the previous album and contains only 10 songs (37 minutes), so the band apparently understood that some filler tracks had marred their previous albums, and weren’t intending to make the same mistake. This would work if they had the consistent material to do so.

A shorter effort, but still uneven, Candy Apple Grey contains a few tracks (“Don’t Want to Know,” “Sorry Somehow”) that gloriously maintain the previous albums’ quality level, and two daring tracks that were unlike anything the band had ever done before. It would point out, however, which territory Hart and Mould would revisit on later solo efforts. Half of the album is classic material, while the other half seems a bit meagre to qualify as ‘essential.’ But hey, think about what the other options were at the time, and you’ll undoubtedly cherish this album.

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Warehouse: Songs and Stories ( 1987 )

9

These Important Years / Charity, Chastity, Prudence and Hope / Standing in the Rain / Back from Somewhere / Ice Cold Ice / You’re a Soldier / Could You Be the One? / Too Much Spice / Friend, You’ve Got to Fall / Visionary / She Floated Away / Bed of Nails / Tell You Why Tomorrow / It’s Not Peculiar / Actual Condition / No Reservations / Turn It Around / She’s a Woman (and Now He Is a Man) / Up in the Air / You Can Live at Home

There they are again, with their fifth (!) album (second double album) in little over three years. Despite this ridiculous work ethic, the horrible psychedelic album cover (I hate fluorescent colors), and the awkward (yes, that is a euphemism) production job done by Mould and Hart, they still hadn't come up with a disappointing album. Many stories have been around, telling the trio were in the middle of a terrible crisis during the record sessions of the past two or three albums, with addictions (alcohol, and Hart had become an heroin addict as well), psychological warfare, fights and unsolvable tensions between Hart and Mould, who were often rumored to have been lovers. Anyway, it’s not essential here, but what’s worth pointing out, is that Hart never got to do as many songs as Mould on an album. Each one of the albums since Zen Arcade had at least one or two Hart classics, but he never got to do more than just a handful. On this double album, it’s almost even, as Mould provides 11 songs, and Hart 9 (much later Hart would tell that Mould used to claim that as long as he’d be in the band, Hart would never get to do his 10 songs).

Not each song is a triumph, however, since Hart’s “You’re a Soldier” sounds simply too repetitive and Mould’s “It’s Not Peculiar” stays a bit too tame. Because of the album’s length and the stylistic unity it may also take you awhile to be able to differentiate between the different songs, especially during the second half of the album. On the other hand, this may be the most consistent of all their albums: it doesn’t have the gut-wrenching harshness and brutal assault of Zen Arcade or New Day Rising, the sustained punk-pop of Flip Your Wig or the emotionally honest ballads of Candy Apple Grey, but it’s an enormously inspiring album without songs that can immediately be categorized as filler (how often does that happen on a 70-minute album?). Sadly enough, it would prove to be the band’s swan song, since tensions between Hart and Mould couldn’t be overcome. Hart slipped further into heroin addiction, and their manager, David Savoy, committed suicide at the end of 1987. The band’s main songwriters would both stay active (especially Mould), while Norton would return to his first love: cooking (he’s a chef). The legacy they left behind can’t be underrated, as they influenced loads and loads of bands, both directly and indirectly. More important to me personally: they were one of the few bands that could fulfill all the things I’ve been seeking in rock music: emotion, intensity, superb musicianship, great songs and the spirit of true rock ‘n’ roll.

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