Customer Reviews

Zen Arcade

5 star:		(82)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hüsker Dü were one of the loudest and most thrashy acts of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then they decided to move away from pure hard metal thrashy rock into hard rock and pop. This didn't exactly thrill some fans (Bob Mould got booed more than once when he stepped out on stage with an acoustic guitar), but the decision led to this album which arguably remains the band's masterpiece.

First released as a double album in 1984, the music ranges from very heavy thrash rock to delicate piano numbers and almost everything in between. The all acoustic number "Never Talking To You Again" sits between the hard rocking songs "Broken Home, Broken Heart" and the incredible "Chartered Trips". "Monday Will Never be the Same" and "One Step at a Time" contain simple and mellow piano/synth music. "Indecision Time", "I'll Never Forget You", "Beyond the Threshold", and "Pride" all thrash cathartically hard with abrasively screamed lyrics. It sounds like the Hüsker Dü of the past. The creepy "The Tooth Fairy And the Princess" approaches psychedelia with its backward tracks and whispered vocals. Not to mention the sleigh bell-laden "Hare Krishna". "Newest Industry" and "Turn on The News" sound like the Hüsker Dü to come. "Zen Arcade" definitely represented a transition for the band.

On top of all that, it's a concept album (which helps explain why critics like it so much). Supposedly the story revolves around a boy who has left home and finds out that the real world sort of stinks. The album does have a somewhat happy ending, though, despite the less than happy lyrics. "Reoccurring Dreams" signifies that the boy's troubles were all just a dream. So we're rewarded with an amazing 14-minute jam session. Good deal.

The sound of the album sounds a little muddled compared to the band's later releases. At the time, Hüsker Dü recorded on a small label called SST (they were so small they had trouble printing enough copies). They therefore didn't have access to top of the line recording technology. Nonetheless, the sound doesn't detract from the album's energy. It may even add to the tension and edge. It definitely distinguishes it from the band's later releases on Warner Brothers.

Hüsker Dü still get cited as one of the most influential post-punk bands. The Pixies acknowledge their influence. Not only that, their evolution from punk thrash to heavy pop rock opened up the scene at the time to more possibilities. It wasn't too long before alternative and grunge caught on. Some of this can be traced back to Hüsker Dü's explorations. And "Zen Arcade" stands as an exemplar of that adventurousness. Don't forget this one.

...Whether this one is better than New Day Rising. It's a great question that should consume Husker Du fans and music historians for years to come. It's kind of like these two albums are mirror images of one another. Zen Arcade is their last hardcore album but with many of the flashes of pop brilliance to come. New Day Rising is their first post-hardcore pop album but with many traces of their old hardcore selves. Basically, Husker Du's career trajectory was like climbing a musical Mount Everest and both albums sit on the summit.

Adding to the feeling of transition is the fact this really plays like three separate records: the first quarter is like the last great hardcore EP, the second quarter is some kind of overly dramatic death punk. The second half is the first great post-hardcore record. Its like they bury a genre and create a new one all in one place.

I think the tendency is to rate Zen Arcade higher, both because it is more challenging and more likely to give you indie cred. It also came first, by which right it outsrips is successor in musical influence. But at the times that I think that New Day Rising is better, my thinking tends to revolve around three songs on this album: Beyond the Threshold, Pride and I'll Never Forget You. Simply put, these are not easy songs to listen to. Some of the times I listen to the album, I allow it to play through and check my ears for blood during these songs. But I don't apologize for sometimes blowing past these songs and making the listening a more pleasant experience on the order of listening to New Day Rising. These songs are critical because they take you to the bottom of the abyss that the album evokes. In other words, they are the album's emotional core. But they are musically limited in a way that the other 20 tracks are not.

Speaking of which, highlights include (but are not limited to) the first four tracks, "Somewhere," "Pink Turns to Blue", which sounds like what would come on Warehouse, "The Tooth Fairy Princess," which is very eerie but also anticipates the less heavy psychedelic experiments to come on Flip Your Wig, and "Turn on the News," which has an anthemic call and response chorus that is unlike anything else Husker Du ever did.

So this may or may not be the pinnacle of the best band of the '80's. Who knows?

Zen Arcade

Not everyone will ever appreciate or understand this record. Those who do have a life-changing experience.

I was first introduced to Husker Du through New Day Rising, the LP that followed this. I was mightily impressed by the songwriting on NDR, and I wanted to see the creative point from which this band started. Zen Arcade probably outstrips New Day Rising. "Turn on the News" is routinely cited as "their finest moment." It's a great song, but it's not all there was to Husker Du -- this band has subtleties that most punk rock groups do not. You might find it interesting, for example, to note that "Monday Will Never Be the Same" is a slowed-down piano transcription of the riff from "Newest Industry." The band experiments with sound -- few hardcore bands I know of ever thought to use a piano in their songs -- and their arrangements are superb. Bob Mould is an excellent guitar player, and any solo he performs on this album is well worth paying attention to.

The most important trait of this album is not the influence it holds in alternative rock today -- mighty though this is. The most important trait of this album is emotion, raw, surging emotion that permeates through every track. The effect of this CD is that listening to it, you feel like you're having a conversation with a close friend, someone you know as well as yourself. Husker Du is honest, a quality that's often hard to find in today's world of glossy pop and Britney Spears and Ricky Martin. True, some recent music has been honest -- Live's "Throwing Copper" immediately comes to mind -- but most of it hasn't been this good. If you can handle intense emotion -- bursts of anger, tender touches of love -- then buy this CD. It's one of a kind.

Five stars out of five.

If Iggy Pop helped, as he has claimed, "to wipe out the 60s," Bob Mould, Grant Hart and Greg Norton then helped to bring it back. That is, this band managed to expand upon the musical/emotional/cathartic possibilities in high speed hardcore by drawing upon 60s (and 70s) psychedelic and hard rock influences. For instance, elsewhere, the band cover such iconic 60s performers as Donovan (Sunshine Superman) and the Byrds (Eight Miles High). And like the Who's Quadrophenia LP, this too appears to be also a concept album about a young man's alienation from the world around him.

Here, such influences abound. For example, Dreams Reoccurring's psychedelic guitar freak out is followed by the absolute hardcore pounding of the great Indecision Time. Hare Krishna - based on the street chant by the well known western Hindu cult - then combines the hardcore, the psychedelic, and the religious even; just listen to Mould's crazy and unbelievable guitar playing on it. And then, a few cuts later, the song Pride. You can practically envision the band levitating off the floor of the recording studio, and it demands that you turn the volume way up, and maybe blow out a window or two to your house, till your neighbors come over, screaming at you to TURN DOWN THE NOISE. And this you cannot do, as you are caught up in a Husker Du trance. Such is the power of this 1984 masterpiece.

This then was the record that made me a huge fan of this group, and I will always be convinced that this remains one of rock's classic recordings by one of its all time greatest bands. I have mixed feelings about the idea of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but given that it exists to enshrine the greats of rock history, I predict that one day Husker Du will be enshrined there, and deservedly so.

Current day punk bands, I challenge you all to do anything half as raw and intense as this, I absolutely challenge you!

This album got me through high school. For every person I was ever mad at, or for every bad day I had, I could pop this one in and Bob or Grant would shout them down for me while pulling of some INSANE riffing and pounding--to this day I don't believe Bob Mould knew how to play guitar when they made this album--he just got lucky, like the three monkeys who eventually typed Hamlet--because this music (and his playing, in particular) is too out of control, too chaotic, to have been played on purpose. The solo on "I Will Never Forget You"--how did he DO that? And just as you're thinking that these songs are nothing but noisy chaos on crack, some beautful, submerged melody appears. Maybe not on the first listen, but give this album a chance and you will realize why so many people believe it to be the greatest ever--not greatest Hardcore album, but simply the greatest rock record EVER. I still cannot reconcile how such tender and touching songs like "Pink Turns to Blue" and "Whatever" exist HAPPILY on the same album as a song like "Indecision Time," but they do. The Huskers just got it right on this album--no pretension, no punk-posing, just bare emotion pushed through three genius brains.
I hadn't listened to this album in years and went back to it expecting to have "outgrown" it--now I'm hooked again, and I'm not even mad at anyone!
Highlights: Atonal baseline in the chorus of "What's Going On," guitar solo that ends "Indecision Time," the crazy "wah wah wah waaaaahhhhss" of Bob Mould's guitar in "Hare Krsna," the two-part harmony in "Never Talking to You Again," the "mom and dad, I'm sorry (I'm gay)" lyrics in "Whatever," and the blood-curdling scream that ends "Tooth Fairy and the Princes." And how many moments of brilliance does this list leave off! Check it out.

Remember when "Top Gun" was the number one movie in the U.S.? When Ronald Reagan was in office? When no one knew what the heck "alternative rock" meant and Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" was the top video on MTV along with all the other heavy metal lite bands?

In 1984 SST records unleashed this masterpiece of hardcore poetry. And it blew my mind and soul: someone else knew how screwed up I felt inside and how confusing I found the world at 16. I don't listen to this album very much anymore (I still have the same copy on vinyl near my stereo) but when I do it's usually all in one sitting. David Fricke wrote in his review for Rolling Stone that "Zen Arcade" is the "Quadrophenia" for the hardcore kids of the early 80s, and he was dead right on that account.

Along with R.E.M.'s "Reckoning", X's "More Fun in the New World" and the Replacements' "Let It Be", this is one of the pioneering rock and roll albums of the early 80s American underground.
Rockers as diverse as Robert Plant and Kurt Cobain are/were Husker Du fans.

Perhaps the most amazing fact is that it was recorded for less than $5000 in a scant 85 hours!

Although all of Husker Du's albums are awesome in their own right, this one has always been singled out as their masterpiece, and with good reason. It was a double album (unheard of in the hardcore underground of the early 1980's), it was recorded in 45 hours, consisting of all first takes (except for 2 songs), and the last thing, oh yeah, it kicks ass! This is a loose concept album about a punk kid's journey through the world and the pain and paranoia he notices in it. However, the music is where it's at, and here it is amazing. The opening blast of Something I Learned Today is savage and followed by Broken Home, Broken Heart (a song that is more applicable today than ever). And they keep coming...What's Going On, Pink Turns to Blue, Never Talking to You Again, Indecision Time, Masochism World, etc. Also there are a few cool incidental instrumentals, and to cap it off, a BRUTAL 14-minute instrumental to close the album, Reoccuring Dreams. From the bleak album cover to the songs on this album, Husker Du deliver one of the best albums of all time. Never mind all the talk that it's overrated because it was the first of its kind...this album plain-out rocks and delivers with every listen!

I've never heard a band go for it in the studio like Husker Du did for Zen Arcade. The playing is for the most part a sonic roar from beginning to end. Listen to I Will Never Forget You and you'll know what I'm talking about. Bob's voice cracks and breaks up he's screaming so loud. You'll just clench your fists and scream along. This is Husker Du at their most passionate and hardcore. Yet as always, there is melody and structure in the maelstrom. Check out the sad Pink Turns To Blue, it's rocking and beautiful and emotionally honest. That heartfelt honesty was the hallmark of '80s hardcore punk. Unlike most of the pop junk made nowadays, Zen Arcade makes you feel.

There are few overdubs, you could almost make the case that this is Husker live in the studio. The album was recorded and mixed in 40 hours, astonishing for a double album. Nowadays you might have the drum tracks for one song done in 40 hours let alone 23 songs recorded and mixed! There's some filler, the last track is basically a 14 minute long jam and one of the shorter songs is the same jam played backwards and edited. Interspersed through the album are a few short piano interludes. Oh well, almost nobody in underground punk rock made double albums then or now, so if they had to pad it a little its not really a problem. The very high quality of the rest of the album makes up for any padding or sonic experiments. One of the best albums of the '80s in any genre. It deserves to be called a masterpiece.

Possibly my favorite album ever. Certainly within the top five.

This double album, its follow-up New Day Rising and the Eight Miles High single capture Husker Du midway through the transition from hardcore punk, still prominently featured here and their distinctively peculiar form of power-pop which will fully blossom in Warehouse and the following solo careers of Bob Mould and Grant Hart.

This album has many strong points and few weaknesses, mostly technical, not in the music or the performance itself: the mixing of the first two pieces is far from perfect, for example. But the rest gets much better.

It's a concept album, in principle, but the story behind the songs is kind of weak and kept in the background. I think the concept can be safely ignored.

The hardcore punk component of Husker's music is still prevalent in the first two songs of the album, which are probably the hardest to listen to for non dedicated fans. "Never Talking To You Again", the very characteristic "Chartered Trips" and "Dreams Reoccurring" move away from classical hardcore and are the first signs on record of what will later become known - much to my chagrin - as "alternative" music (it's simply beatiful music, the way it is meant to be).

There's a string of hardcore songs after that, very well-done hardcore punk, by the way, reminiscent of the Husker's preceeding albums.

The second part of this record gets through what was at the time completely unexplored terrain, including the ultimate 77-style punk anthem "Pink Turns Into Blue" (by Grant Hart), the 14 odd minutes long instrumental "Reoccurring Dreams", a string of Bob Mould's very own gems ("Somewhere","Newest Industry", "Whatever") and the powerful "Turn On the News". All are absolutely brilliant.

Okay, I've been putting it off and putting it off, but now comes the time for me to write a review of Husker Du's brilliant Zen Arcade. This album is definitely on my list of top ten favorites (okay, maybe top five is more like it). There are so many mixed emotions here that it's hard to describe what it's like to sit down and listen to this album, except to say that its power has yet to dilute (and frankly, I doubt that it ever will).

I have to admit that I only got this album about two and a half years ago. Before that, the only Husker Du CD I had was Flip Your Wig. And although I liked that album, Zen Arcade was the one that got me hooked on Husker Du permanently. This is pure brilliance. In a lot of ways, Husker Du were to the '80s underground what the Beatles were to rock music in the '60s. Both bands had two great songwriters, and both made albums that transcended the boundaries of rock music.

This album captures every facet of the Huskers, given the many diffrent types of songs here. If you divide this album into four pieces, you'll see the changes in moods a little more obviously. "Something I Learned Today" and "Chartered Trips" race along at a breakneck speed, but retain a wistful melodicism at the same time, while songs like "Indecision Time" and "I Will Never Forget You" explode in a fury of aggressive rage that put a lot of heavy metal bands to shame. The songs towards the last half of the album, such as "Somewhere" and the beautiful "Whatever" are driven by pure melody. One of Zen Arcade's main highlights, "Pink Turns to Blue," a psychedelic pop song buried within waves of hazy guitar, is a forerunner for the approach that Smashing Pumpkins would later use (and while I'm on the subject, listen to the Pumpkins' "1979," and notice the similarity to "What's Going On" in the bassline). Despite its thirteen-minute length, the closing instrumental "Reoccurring Dreams" remains exciting to the very last second, and proves that the Huskers had an almost Who-like apporach to blending their instruments together. Bob Mould's guitar work here is truly spectacular (and by the way, I feel that he is one of the best and most underrated guitarists out there). His blend of atmospheric feedback and lightning fast fingerwork is truly something to behold. The other experimental tracks which are scattered throughout, such as the strummed acoustic "Never Talking to You Again" (which I learned how to play on my guitar), the Bo Diddley knockoff "Hare Krishna", or the voice collage "Tooth Fairy and the Princess" are all interesting and display an originality and inventiveness that was quite unprecedented in the rock underground (or in much of today's rock for that matter), and even remains startlingly original even now. The band even uses a piano at various points on this album, such as on "What's Going On," and the "Pink Turns to Blue" intro "One Step at a Time," which is pretty cool if you ask me, considering that Husker Du had a punk rock fan base. Hell, "One Step at a Time" actually sounds nice to listen to. I don't know what else to say, really. This album represents all of the best assets of Husker Du, heck, even the socio-political anthem "Turn on the News" rocks with a fury like no other.

This is one of those albums that stays with you forever once you listen to it. I've listened to a lot of music in my time, but I personally consider this one of the best, most inventive, and most rewarding albums in all of rock and roll. If you're just getting into Husker Du, I would recommend getting either New Day Rising or Flip Your Wig first, just so you can get an introduction to their sound without all of the experimentation, but I would highly recommend making this your second Husker purchase, as its glory is thrown into much sharper focus in comparison to its more concise counterparts. Or, if experimentation doesn't bother you, go ahead and take the plunge and buy Zen Arcade first. Either way, it's totally worth it. This album is of the highest order. Long live Husker Du!