Now very seriously on a roll, HUSKER DU brought it all back home with their first home-state studio recording at Nicollet Studios,Minneapolis, still with producer Spot at the helm, plus new engineer Steve Fjelstad.
Certainly,"New Day Rising"is the first of four consistently great hardcore/pop crossover goodies to be recorded in a mere 28 months in total (roughly the time it takes the STEREO MC's to skin up, never mind write a song...), only refining "Zen Arcade"s hairier moments, whilst still packing an almighty punch.
The "Live In London" video (released around this time) features the HUSKERs performing most of these songs in a frenzied set at London's Camden Palace in November 1984 and most of these 15 songs transfer every inch as well to vinyl, with both Mould and Hart's songwriting motoring forwards. Indeed, while the abrasive "Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill" is traditional hardcore fare, both "Terms Of Psychic Warfare" and especially "Books About UFOs" (finding Grant besotted by an extraterrestrially-obsessed hippie girl) show Hart as keen to get to grips with brazen pop as Kurt Cobain would later with "About A Girl."
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Not that Mould's exactly left behind either; "I Apologize", the T-Rex acknowledging "Celebrated Summer" and "Powerline" - straddling another of Norton's killer off-centre basslines - clocking in as examples of his finest juggernaut riffing allied to brain-scouring melodies. Heavenly,in a word.
Like its' mighty successor,"Flip Your Wig","New Day Rising" does flounder a little as it races for the finishing line; the last four tunes often little more than hastily-assembled angst chants, despite some impressive powerchord muscle. However, overall "New Day Rising" compounded "Zen Arcade"s ecstatic feeling of an inspired power trio inching towards the mainstream with an uncompromising post-punk sound. Not bad in those ultra-dull mid 80s really!
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