REVIEW
Bob Mould - Black Sheets Of Rain (Virgin)
As most people who were lucky enough to hear underground radio in the 80's might remember, Hüsker Dü (Bob Mould-Guitar, vocals; Grant Hart-Drums, Vocals & Greg Norton-Bass, Backing vocals) were one of the best bands of the decade. By merging the raw psychedelic thrash of Bob Mould's guitar with Grant Hart's leadenfoot backbeat and Greg Norton's melodic basslines, they came up with a sound that echoed the 80's as surely as the Byrds' ringing 12-String Rickenbacker sound echoed the 60's. Though they started the decade as seemingly just another hardcore band, by their third album, 1984's Zen Arcade, they were already breaking the narrow rules of that scene.
Zen Arcade was a double album 'with a loose concept and included acoustic guitars, backwards tapes and a long instrumental. And, and, and-this is very important-it was highly intelligent. These weren't some pretty idiots or barely reconstructed humans picking up guitars and going "chungachungachunga", nope, these were guys who were not only smart enough to write words that actually said something but at the same time they were smart enough to rock out just for the sake of rocking out. We hadn't seen that since, say. The Clash imploded. (Which was only a couple of years before, but it seemed like forever.) Zen Arcade wasn't all successful, but it broke new ground and had its own momentum, especially on songs like "Whatever", "Pink Turns to Blue" (Grant Hart's first great love song, even if it was to a dead girl-making the title poignant and dirty at the same time) and, of course, the big anthem at the end, "Turn on the News". But better than a11 of that was the single they released at the same time-their titanic cover of the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" (by light years the best cover song of the decade)-- which, as it exploded with Bob Mould's increasingly incomprehensible vocal fury (the last verse isn't so much sung as it is one long series of screams-and it works!), left no doubt in anyone's mind that this band had a force to be reckoned with. And as the decade hit its halfway point, that force hit warp speed.
1985's New Day Rising kicked off a whirlwind of recording that saw the Hüskers release four records in a little over two years worth of time. That title track, with its mantra repeated again and again over Grant Hart's double-time thrashbeat was as cathartic as any screaming hardcore song, as melodic as any pop song and weirdest of all, it wasn't full of the "life sucks" negativity that seemed to go hand and hand with the punk rock of the era. The irony of Bob Mould's increasingly frenetic "new day rising, new day rising, new day rising!" was that he wasn't being ironic. He really meant it. He needed to mean it. We needed to hear it. New Day Rising also contained, among several other great songs, the fantastic "Celebrated Summer", with its blend of soft and hard parts, poignant lyrics and spot-on guitar solo. All in all, most bands would consider a year in which they released an album as top-notch as New Day Rising a damn fine year. 