release date: Sep. 1985
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,65]
producer: Bob Mould, Grant Hart
label: SST Records - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "Flip Your Wig" - 3. "Makes No Sense at All" (promo-video) - 4. "Hate Paper Doll" - 5. "Green Eyes" - 6. "Divide and Conquer" - 11. "Private Plane"
4th full studio album by Hüsker Dü released only eight months after New Day Rising introduces the two dominant forces in the band, Bob Mould and Grant Hart as album producers. The album contains 15 tracks of which Mould is credited as songwriter of 9 and Hart of the remaining 5.
With the two vocalists and songwriters as producer-duo, the sound has now improved. Stylistically, the album continues a style of primarily alt. rock and power pop with links to punk rock, or simply: post-hardcore, although, the punk rock element seems further and further away, and what remains is basically one of the finest examples of sources to the initial grunge movement in the early 1990s. For the first time around, Mould and Hart almost share the writing credits - Mould is credited nine, Hart five of the fourteen tracks - not as partners, and not even as co-writers, but more as individual contributors. Hart delivers folk rock and singer / songwriter political and more experimental and introspective material, whereas Mould here outbeats Hart on strong harmony structures, energy and choruses with catchy tunes.
Without being great, this is clearly the band's so far best album, imho.
[ allmusic.com 5 / 5, Rolling Stone 4,5 / 5 stars ]
