Husker Du
Zen Arcade
Once upon a time, Husker Du were the most important band in the world. The year was 1984, and the post-punk trio from Minneapolis, Minnesota had just released their double album Zen Arcade. It isn’t their best album, it isn’t even their longest album, but it is their most important. Zen broke the post-punk mold by demonstrating that you didn’t have to follow punk rock’s loud, fast rules anymore. That it was possible to use the double album format favored by the bombastic art rockers punk railed against without losing your intensity or integrity. It was art and it seared the ears.
Even today, some 16 years later, listening to Zen Arcade in its’ entirety is a cleansing experience. Husker had yet to reach the point where the songs of guitarist Bob Mould and drummer Grant Hart had become distinctly separate, so buzzsaw tracks like “Something I Learned Today”, “Never Talking To You Again”, “Beyond the Threshold” and “What’s Going On” (not the Marvin Gaye tune) come across as constant washes of noise. Mould and Hart don’t simply scream their lyrics of inner turmoil, they howl them. Their pain is palpable because it sounds real. The brutally great final side--containing only two songs, the most tuneful the Huskers had written up to that point, “Turn On The News” and the 14-minute dirge “Reoccurring Dreams”-- slam the door and bring home the theme of the album: despite our society’s continuing claim of progress, the larger and more modern we become, the easier it is for the individual to get lost. It is a song cycle that is in many ways the punk soul mate to The Who’s Quadrophenia.
Husker Du would go on to make their best, most coherent statement six months later when they released New Day Rising, and farther down the line became one of the first post-punk bands to sign to a major label, anticipating and inspiring grunge acts like Nirvana. In fact, Zen Arcade now looks like, and deserves to be recognized as, the seminal recording it is, clearing the path and remaining unsurpassed as a chillingly beautiful portrait of confusion and fear in the modern age.
Music Direct Magazine, 2000
