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...gets all this, but he also gets something else--one of the most pleasant surprises of the season. Unlike the current generation of hardcore records--including Husker Du's own, Land Speed Records--Zen Arcade successfully captures the spontaneity and the furious inspiration of an unpolished live recording, without becoming too bogged down by technical deficiencies...
WHAT RAISES Husker Du above the gaggle of hard core noise on the scene today is its deliberate shunning of the often-phony themes of that genre--anger and rebellion. Instead, they tap a feeling usually associated with less subversive types of music--pain. In "Broken Home. Broken Heart," Mould sings of the pain of a broken home; on "Whatever," of parent-child misunderstanding. Either way, his howls of anguish sound genuine, with a passion that leaves the listener thinking of Ray Charles rather than punk. Even the album's one great footstamper--Hart's "What's Going On"--stands...
There's a certain amount of dead-end fatalism in Husker Du's songs: "Something I Learned Today" is an anthem to crushed ideals, while "Chartered Trips," the album"s most haunting song, expresses the futility of trying to escape the boredom and problems of everyday life...
...credit, though, Husker Du doesn't seem to give up hope. In "Somewhere," Hart keeps up his "search for truth" even though he only finds lies, and in "The Tooth Fairy and the Princess," he sounds a simple message of don't-give-up-no-matter-what-happens...
...little hokey, no doubt, but then this prodding message seems to have less in common with the nihilism of the punk movement than with the more expansive hippie movement of the sixties. Husker Du's true roots, as this album and their single "Eight Miles High" demonstrate, are set firmly within psychedelia. You can hear it in Mould's leads, which seem to have timewarped in from songs like the Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping" or the Byrds' "Eight Miles High." You can hear it in the tinkling harmonies and the choruses of songs like "Pink Turns to Blue...