This album is on a MAJOR LABEL, it was released on Warner Bros, so this is the moment when Hüsker Dü finally sold their souls to the man. Nah just kidding (or at least mostly kidding). In fact most of this album sounds very similar to their previous album Flip Your Wig. In fact at this point it’s starting to get a bit predictable – I’m not sure I’m totally thrilled about another album filled with fuzzed-out strummed chords, mid-paced rock beats, and pop-rock melodies.
The very first song “Crystal” is a little deceptive actually, as the instrumentals are doing a fairly standard chord-based thing like we’re used to, but Bob Mould screams and gurgles out the lyrics in a way we haven’t heard maybe since a couple albums ago. It’s almost like they put this one first on purpose, to tell everyone “hey look, see, we didn’t sell out”.
But then after that everything becomes much more predictable. I must say that at this point I think Grant Hart became the better songwriter. In fact the 2 best songs here, which are the 2 singles, are both by Hart: “Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely” and “Sorry Somehow”. The guy has a knack for writing a solid/catchy rock tune. He also has another p good one on the second side, “Dead Set on Destruction”. But much of the rest of the album is somewhat less exciting.
Another thing that must be mentioned is the ACOUSTIC tracks, uh-oh, here we go. This includes the middle two tracks here, both by Bob Mould, “Too Far Down” and “Hardly Getting Over It”. Now you know that generic 90s acoustic style that was all over rock radio, and like, that guy in your high school played with his acoustic guitar at the school talent show? Tbh I can’t even name specific artists because I always avoided this kind of lame ass music, but like… Ben Folds, I guess? idk. Now the difference here is that this was just 1986 so Hüsker Dü were the ~innovators~ of this style, not followers like all the lame 90s bands, but it’s still not a style of music that appeals to me at all, and it’s honestly a disappointing direction for this band to go in. Grant Hart’s piano ballad “No Promise Have I Made” is in a similar vein, although it’s a little more entertaining due to a ridiculously over-the-top vocal climax where he hits these absurd screaming high notes, it’s kind of hilarious actually lol. But maybe not in a good way. At least these guys’ vocals were always ~rough around the edges~ even when they were producing more mainstream-palatable kinds of music.
Anyway also notable is that this is the first album where Hüsker Dü does NOT include any like weird instrumentals or experiments, which they had been moving away from but their last two albums still contained at least a couple of tracks each like that. And that’s disappointing too because those were always among my favorite tracks on those albums.
Does Bang want to listen to this? Somewhat, sure, I guess.
The Davis Collective 