SOUNDTRACK: HÜSKER DÜ-Candy Apple Grey (1986).
This disc seems to be universally panned as the worst Hüsker Dü disc (meaning it only gets 4 stars instead of 5) and yet I disagree. Perhaps it’s because it was the second disc of theirs that I had heard and so it has always been more familiar, or maybe it’s because I think the sounds is fuller.
“Don’t Want to Know if You Are Lonely” is like the culmination of Grant Hart’s pop songwriting career. Some say that the song is too stereotypically Hüsker Dü since all the parts fit together so well (as if that’s a bad thing). “Sorry Somehow” is another shouting Mould gem that retains its pop sheen even with the noise. And speaking of noise, the buzzsaw guitars that open the disc sound like nothing so much as the Jesus and Mary Chain. Warner Bros must have been wondering what they got themselves into that their newly signed band opened their disc with that.
What’s most surprising about this disc though are the two acoustic numbers. Hüsker Dü had obviously experimented before (see Zen Arcade) but these are the most delicate pieces they had written. I mean, Bob’s voice is so delicate, it cracks in “Too Far Down” for goodness sake. And “Hardly Getting Over It” would certainly be musically familiar to anyone who knows Mould’s solo album Workbook.
It may not be a masterpiece, and I know that most Hüsker Dü fans don’t think that much of it, but it totally rocks my world.
[READ: July 6, 2009] “Childcare”
I had heard great things about Lorrie Moore. I bought her Birds of America and then just never read it. Then one day I was in my car waiting for some interminable thing or another and really wished I had a book with me. I decided to put Birds of America in my car. It’s a collection of short stories, so it seemed perfect. And then I never got in another situation where I was at an interminable wait and didn’t have some other book, too. So basically her book is still unread although now it is nicely beaten up. Sigh.
So this is my first Lorrie Moore story. She reminds me, at first thought, of Alice Munro (although she is not Canadian, nor quite so dark), because they both tend to focus on little events in people’s lives and how they can become defining. Their stories are also small in scope, (in that not a lot “happens”), but are powerfully written and show a lot more going on underneath the surface.
In this story, Tassie Keltjin, a young woman who is just out of college goes in search of a job. She is looking specifically in the “childcare” area because she doesn’t really know what she wants to do for a real career. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: HÜSKER DÜ-Flip Your Wig (1985).
Here’s where Hüsker Dü dropped most of the pretense that they didn’t write the catchiest songs ever. And, if this had been released in the mid 90s it would have been an enormous hit. Or for that matter, if this had been released on Warner Brothers as it was meant to be instead of SST, Hüsker Dü would probably be a more familiar name (and of course no one would love them as much).
SOUNDTRACK: HÜSKER DÜ-New Day Rising (1985).
After Zen Arcade, who would have guessed that Hüsker Dü would finally release a regular album…not live, not an EP, not a double record, just a standard platter of 40 minutes of music.
After the insane hardcore mess of Land Speed Record, this EP is a bit of a change. It’s still pretty hardcore, but now you can tell that the noisiness of the guitar is deliberate. Bob Mould is playing around with multiple layers of feedback and distortion to create a wall of noise that sometimes hides, sometime accentuates the overall sound.
I Just Read About That... 