By Steve Albini
There's a cool song Husker Du (there are supposed to be umlauts over those u's, but the typesetter doesn't speak Swedish) have been playing recently, and one of its lyrics is a repetitive chant, What's going on in your head?1 That's something fans and detractors of Husker Du have been asking for quite a while.
"We started out just playing as fast as we could, to keep the energy level up, and we kept getting faster," says founder and guitarist Bob Mould. "We used to play all the time, since we weren't too well-versed on our instruments — we'd play a lot to get in shape. When the first single ('Statues'/'Amusement') came out, everyone expected it to be a really fast record, but we put out the two slowest songs we had. People out of town thought that we were an art band or something, so when we played out of town and started in with the fast stuff, nobody really knew what was going on."
Some critics have said that the Huskers, as their Minneapolis neighbors have taken to calling them, are trend jumpers, moving from the PiL-esque sound of "Statues" to the hyperventilated thrash of Land Speed Record, their live debut LP, when tides changed. Husker Du say bullshit.
"WE NEVER tried to be a 'hardcore' band or anything," Mould says. "We were really surprised when we found out there were other bands doing something similar, with the speed and everything. We just do what each song requires, we don't try to play slow or fast or anything. Right now we're at a stage where we have to think things through in a big way. We're going to try to do something bigger than anything like rock and roll and the whole puny band touring idea. I don't know what it's going to be, we have to work that out, but it's going to go beyond the whole idea of 'punk rock' or whatever.
Husker Du (l. to r.) Greg Norton, Grant Hart, and Bob Mould
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Immediate plans include the release
and support tour for a new EP, Metal Circus, on the Minutemen's New
Alliance label,2 a 7-inch single by the
Minutemen on Husker Du's Reflex label and Reflex albums by Riflesport and
Man-Sized Action.3
"The Minutemen record is going to be a fun thing, real quick, which will make us a little money and get some more of their material out," says Mould. "The other two albums are from bands we think are really good, which we were able to afford." The last two Husker releases, the In A Free Land EP and Everything Falls Apart album, display a frenetic (not frantic) power laced with thick guitar, Greg Norton's rubbery bass and the Buzzcockish drumming of Grant Hart. Metal Circus will be in a similar vein, says Mould, although that wasn't premeditated. HUSKER DU have never been |
very concerned with their image, which may be
why so many people find them hard to peg. Their visual image has rested
largely on the enigmatic record artwork they use, since the band doesn't like
to circulate photographs of themselves, and don't look like what they sound
like anyway.
"The way we look isn't important," says Mould. That doesn't have anything to do with it. We move around a lot and put out the energy, so people can see we're working at it, so our hairstyles really don't matter." That's a good thing, since Husker hair is among the least "punk" of all hard-coifs. Greg looks like he stepped out of GQ, with cropped hair, trimmed mustache and muscular build; Grant could replace anybody in Motorhead (maybe two people in Motorhead), and Bob looks like a St. Paul gas station |
