Hüsker Dü: the best punk of the eighties

"I started to wonder if we were better than U2”, wrote singer Bob Mould, remembering how Hüsker Dü exploded into 1985 on the roll of their lives. “I wondered if we were the best band in the world”.

For a 14-month period, he wondered correctly. The Minneapolis power trio’s frenzied run of three albums released between July 1984 and September 1985 (Zen Arcade, New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig) exploded them free of the strictures of American hardcore to become - as Sounds put it - “the most exciting and important American rock band since the Ramones”.

The gawky threesome - Mould, mustachioed bassist Greg Norton and singing drummer Grant Hart - were never innovators, their incandescent, intensely emotional sound a simple enough amalgam of the Buzzcocks, The Beatles and Black Flag. However, while they are best known as the first major US underground act of their age to sign to a major label, setting a path for Sonic Youth and Nirvana to follow, the band named after a Swedish board game (translation: “Do you remember?”) deserve recognition as a pop group of phenomenal power.

A Fab Four-fixated shopkeeper’s son from New York State, Macalester College student Mould met hippie throwback Hart in a Minneapolis record shop, the pair - both gay, but never lovers - goading each other to ever greater heights as songwriters for the best part of a decade. Unmistakably punk on the live Land Speed Record (1982) and Everything Falls Apart (1983), they calmed the martial tempos for Metal Circus (1983), then unleashed their inner Byrds on 1984 double LP Zen Arcade.

A relentless, psychedelic assault, this intense meditation on young manhood earned the Hüskers a whole new ‘college rock’ audience. It was the Nevermind blueprint seven years early, but Mould and Hart ditched it within weeks. New Day Rising (released in January 1985) is the Mamas & Papas with rocket boots, fury transformed into a kind of transcendental joy on the 1980s’ greatest Side One. Melodic starbursts were more intense still on Flip Your Wig, released eight months later. Hear raga hurricane “Divide And Conquer” and be forever transformed.

Black Flag’s SST label couldn’t handle Hüsker Dü’s sales (albums disappeared from shops for months at a time), but if Warner Brothers kept the sophisticated Candy Apple Grey (1986) and four-sided swansong Warehouse: Songs And Stories (1987) in the racks, they couldn’t keep the moody Mould and the increasingly strung-out Hart together. The pair split in 1988, trading blows on their solo debuts - Mould’s professorial Workbook and Hart’s rickety Intolerance - and only reconciling just before Hart’s death in 2017. The Pixies, the Lemonheads and Mould’s solo vehicle Sugar all had success with variants on the sweet/sour Hüsker Dü formula, but - as Mould may have realized in 1984 - no-one could ever do it better.