Revitalized Psychedelia

HUSKER DU proudly announces on the inner sleeve of its new double album, Zen Arcade, that "the whole thing took about 85 hours." What's more, all but two of the songs here were recorded first-take, and the album's new owner can hope for only the worst from this Minneapolis group: muddy sound quality, sloppy playing, missed cues, lots of feedback.

He 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.

The first crack at this record may prove a little misleading; the abrasive assault of the music masks the band's clear melodic sense. On repeated listenings, however, the first-takes give the music an urgency and a power that might be lost if the songs became more polished. Guitarist Bob Mould's work here may be a little sloppier than the clean, metallic flurries that he produced on the e.p. Metal Circus (released at the beginning of this year). It's also more frenetic, more expansive, and more impassioned.

Mould's guitar is the backbone of this album--whether he's bashing out thickly fuzzed Heavy Metal riffs or breaking through the rhythm section with wildly distorted psychedelia. Meanwhile, drummer Grant Hart--who wrote many of the songs on the album--keeps things going, especially when Mould's guitar work ossifies into hackwork.

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 as a cry of frustrated bewilderment.

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.

To its 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.

It's a 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" or "Whatever." You can hear it in the raveup of "Reoccurring Dreams."

Unlike Three O'Clock or Echo and the Bunnymen, Husker Du is not just reviving psychedelia: they are revitalizing it, which, if you think about it, is kind of ironic. In the late sixties, much of the psychedelic music of the Byrds, the Beatles and Love were created through intensive and deliberate studio work. Now, 15 years later, Husker Du is bringing back the spirit and sound of psychedelia by keeping as far away from the studio as is humanly possible.