Following Hüsker Dü’s groundbreaking Zen Arcade, the relatively streamlined New Day Rising provided equal parts muscular intensity and melody as the band laid the groundwork for the future of alternative music.
Like their contemporaries, the Minutemen or the Clash before them, Hüsker Dü arguably had the best four-year run of any punk band ever. The Clash developed considerably from their debut (1977) through Sandinista! (1980), but the early 1980s marked a different time for punk bands, and Hüsker Dü chafed against what had become commonplace in the scene. The trio, made up of Bob Mould (guitars/vocals), Greg Norton (bass), and Grant Hart (drummer/vocals), came into their own with Zen Arcade (1984) (some would argue 1983’s Metal Circus EP) and released a handful of outstanding records in short order, which effectively ended with Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987).
Hardcore bands were known for touring relentlessly and releasing albums in rapid succession. That artistry allowed groups to develop by leaps and bounds. Much has been made about the swift transformation of seminal pop-rock acts, like the Beach Boys, who went from early surf sounds to the career-defining Pet Sounds by the mid-1960s, or the Beatles, who had developed from “I Saw Her Standing There” to “Tomorrow Never Knows” in a similarly brief span; however, the spotlight and stressors of the music industry created that pressure cooker. The punk bands to follow embraced a DIY spirit that could be likened to a shark swimming to stay alive.
The group that most closely aligned with Hüsker Dü’s ethos was the Minutemen. Hüsker Dü had a longer tenure than the Minutemen due to D. Boon’s tragic death, but both bands were signature acts on SST’s southern California-based record label. Hüsker Dü hailed from St. Paul and was a significant part of the Twin Cities’ now thriving music scene, with bands like the Replacements and Soul Asylum, but they became a known commodity on the coast thanks to their time touring out west. Like the eclectic and left-leaning Minutemen, Hüsker Dü stayed true to their values and combated tenets of hardcore that had become derivative.
That is not to say Hüsker Dü were not without incongruities, as can be gleaned from the egalitarian approach to the music industry versus their inner band turmoil. When it came to label decisions, Hüsker Dü just seemed happy to be releasing music that fans would hear on tour (they often played their music live first, unlike most bands today that follow a tight release schedule).
According to Michael Azerrad’s excellent Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, Hüsker Dü deferred their album sales royalties, which helped SST with cash flow. The label also shockingly pushed back Zen Arcade’s release date so it could coincide with Minutemen’s classic Double Nickels on the Dime (1984). Yes, two genre-defining double albums were released on the same date.
While everything was kumbaya in their world, those decisions seem puzzling from a business standpoint. Due to the timing of those two monster releases, the label didn’t press as many copies of Zen Arcade as they should have. Yes, Hüsker Dü were now in high demand but had little to show for it. While they made most of their money from touring, deferred royalties were no longer insubstantial (and would be something SST would be paying back for years to come). The spirit of the underground scene was certainly refreshing compared to the bloat of major labels (one of which Hüsker Dü would eventually join in Warner Bros.), but it also meant the bands had to work extra hard to stay afloat.
As improbable as it seems, New Day Rising (1985) was recorded around Zen Arcade’s release and available just six months later. Quite possibly, the only thing that kept Hüsker Dü from putting out another double album was a request from the label that, although they wanted more music as soon as possible, they weren’t ready for another sprawling effort. A factor related to the sheer quantity of music was that studio time was at a premium and relatively costly. Hence, the group came in prepared whenever they got the opportunity. That meant Hüsker Dü churned out most of their recordings in first takes, which added to their mystique.
While Hüsker Dü readily met SST’s request for more music, inner band turmoil was starting to become a thing, mainly due to the songwriting. According to Azerrad, prior to Zen Arcade, Mould had pushed for songwriting credits. By this point, Mould and Hart were writing songs at a torrid pace, which led to competition between the two for prominence. Norton described how each one seemed threatened by the other, and the result was they both ended up writing “a shitload of songs”. It was a problem that benefited all, even if the friction that resulted eventually led to the band’s demise.
After Zen Arcade, Hüsker Dü were left with a specific challenge: How do you follow up the genre-defining work that flipped hardcore on its head? Hüsker Dü had proven that pretty melodies and pop songs could live within hardcore’s fast and loud numbers. They also showed how punk could be thought-provoking and that concept albums need not be reserved for progressive rock, something that acts like the Hold Steady and Fucked Up took to heart a few decades later. They answered the call by doubling down on more of the same and, some would argue, made it even better.
The opening drum cadence and rising sequence to the opening track “New Day Rising” would set the tone for the rest of the record, which offered as much muscular intensity as it did melody. “New Day Rising” is not far off from Zen Arcade opener “Something I Learned Today”. Hüsker Dü used a post-punk bassline on the earlier track as their jumping-off point. “New Day Rising” came at listeners more directly, focusing on the metallic-sounding guitar and screams (and echoes of screams) that would return to listeners any time those words were spoken, let alone played through speakers.
Just listen to the first ten seconds of each of the opening three songs, which also includes “The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill” and “I Apologize”, and one can hear the breadth of speed meets strength that was now able to be now communicated through Hüsker Dü’s music. The tunes on New Day Rising ultimately laid the groundwork for other bands to follow, whether it be the brooding elements of Mould’s songwriting that were taken up by Pixies and eventually grunge acts in their wake or the origins of pop-punk that were forged through Hart’s tracks. At the time, little could the band know the lasting influence they would have in the alternative music sphere.
Despite the distinctive sounds Hüsker Dü could now produce, they moved from track to track with ease, which was part sequencing and part innate ability to make tempo changes sound natural. New Day Rising offered a more streamlined set of songs with no acoustic numbers (“Never Talking to You Again”) or psych-rock send-ups (“Hare Krsna”). “Books About UFOs”, the ramshackle bar number in the vein of the Pogues, is as close as they would come to integrating another genre into the effort (although “How to Skin a Cat” possibly created a subgenre unto itself). Like their concerts, which moved at a breakneck pace, New Day Rising gave listeners little time to catch their breath, especially within this “trimmed down” set of 15 tracks.
New Day Rising is relentless but in a different way than Land Speed Record (1981). Their live debut album was a cacophonous onslaught that could make one’s ears bleed, if not feel like a punch in the gut. If those earlier songs didn’t meld into one, the shroud of noise certainly did. On this effort, the tracks might devolve into chaos, but they were just as likely to be brought back from the brink (“If I Told You”, “59 Times the Pain”).
The fact that Hüsker Dü could now wield their power shows how far they had come in just a few short years. The only real knock is that the production left a lot to be desired. For example, the record contained certain moments when the vocals needed to be adjusted, especially Mould’s lower register on “Perfect Example” and “59 Times the Pain”. Had Hüsker Dü spent more time in the studio, they could have worked out some flaws that the indie label wasn’t equipped to handle, but there would be no guarantees that the finished product would have possessed the same urgency.
The songwriting breakdown must have been painstakingly plotted out on Zen Arcade and New Day Rising. As with their early releases, Mould was writing most of the songs, whereas Hart wrote roughly 20 percent (leaving some combination of the band for the remaining cuts). The math may not matter much to the average listener, but over time, Hart featured more prominently to the point where songwriting duties were nearly split by Warehouse: Songs and Stories (only “nearly”, though, as Hart’s lasting resentment centered on how Mould never gave him more than 45 percent of an album).
Even if Mould was the de facto leader, some of Hart’s songs were beginning to become fan favorites. On New Day Rising, those included “The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill” and “Terms of Psychic Warfare”, but eventually, his credits included “Green Eyes” and “Flexible Flyer” on Flip Your Wig (1985) and “Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely” from Candy Apple Grey (1986). Sure, Mould regularly produced bangers that demanded attention, but the balance of power had shifted.
Even if the songwriting duties were much the same, one could make the case that New Day Rising was the point where Mould and Hart’s complementary but parallel ambitions could no longer be contained. Fans ultimately benefited because it led to some of their best music together. Mould penned one of his most mature numbers in lead single “Celebrated Summer”, which recalled an idyllic time of swimming, playing in a band, and drinking on the beach, hoping to stay in that place even if life’s cyclical nature of demands that it must end.
Hart’s phenomenal “Terms of Psychic Warfare” opened Side B of the record, an example of how his songs had begun to earn better placement. The tune emerged with Lou Reed swagger and featured the biting tongue of a spurned lover: “Now all the silver you can steal / Can’t buy a piece of what I feel”. The backing vocals suggest that some bonds cannot be broken when it comes to brotherhood.
Punk primarily arose from the need to express feelings contradictory to those of the mainstream. That principle challenged groups to manifest sounds and styles that undermined pop music’s basic structure. If the Ramones complicated the notion that punk was the antithesis of pop, Hüsker Dü had since loosed the genre from its moorings. With New Day Rising, the band had not made a return to form but suggested there was another way forward, which built upon a history of punk and hardcore while embracing conventional elements that had been spurned from the outset. The reintegration of pop into punk may seem like a foregone conclusion today, with groups like Green Day now being played on top-40 radio stations, but that was not the case in the mid-1980s.
There was a moment when hardcore could have succumbed to its worse demons, something that was exemplified by Darby Crash’s intentional suicide by heroin. Visions of such a gritty demise, when considered alongside other regressive behaviors, such as fans—predominately young males—that sought the opportunity to sate their sadistic impulses, signaled various factions had completely missed the mark.
Hüsker Dü helped to reign in that fury, as they packaged their songs as bursts of energy equally fit for moshing as they were for humming along. As the title suggests, the band had proposed nothing less than a new outlook for themselves and for the scene as a whole. Today, we recognize that New Day Rising altered the trajectory of alternative rock. Another perspective is how fans would have received the music in 1985 as a pared-down continuation of what Hüsker Dü had begun just half a year before, and a damn fine record at that.