Husker Du

“Zen Arcade” is the celebration of youth.

“Zen Arcade” is melody, noise, brain, heart.

“Zen Arcade” is hardcore sifted, turned inside out, reshaped by an unruly lyrical impulse, and, precisely because of that, alive, burning, blinding.

“Zen Arcade” is the past, present and future of everyone who has never forgotten the value of “escape,” the smell of friendship stuck to the skin like a rampant cancer…

Recalling the escapades and tomfoolery of days gone by; savoring a life that scatters itself among a thousand emotions, and paying it no mind, at least until you find the strength to scream songs like these at the top of your lungs. Maybe dodging the most treacherous fears and anxieties, without showing the slightest tension; nothing…

“Zen Arcade” is violence, pure catharsis. No longer merely a propitiatory rite for the Apocalypse, no longer. Because behind that impenetrable wall of reverb, of accelerations and shattered melodies, a thousand provocations lurk, a thousand jagged, hair-raising screams. The youth you don't expect: not yet adulthood, no longer childhood. No man's land: anguish and trembling. Fear.

Fear: the magic word upon which the entire musical and narrative scaffolding of this unreachable masterpiece by Hüsker Dü from Minneapolis, USA, rests — and, indeed, all of hardcore. Fear: what, deep down, actually drives one to act, to counterattack. Unease turns into total, definitive resolution. And you discover things that until then had only been feared and/or glimpsed here and there, in passing. “Something I Learned Today / Black And White Is Always Grey”: with these lines, Mould announces the start of the descent into darkness. From there, he'll have to climb back up, little by little, slowly… Breaking hearts, destroying relationships, leaving: “Broken Home, Broken Heart” is fast, uncompromising, with that dizzying six-string solo from Mould that is nothing if not the symbol of rage. “Never Talking To You Again,” on the other hand, is the folk ballad you don't expect, yet desolate at its core: irremediably so. Because you do leave, sure. But with no destination; restless wanderers, battered in body and spirit. The impossible, abominable sun clings to you; the wind that revives the body and kills off thought. The journey becomes a metaphor, a symbol for everything that is human: unease. “Chartered Trips,” in its almost solemn stride, teaches this and much more. An inexorable progression of catchiness and sick, restless joy.

It slips away in an instant. It spins in circles like raving madmen. The sound is dissolved, recomposed; dissolved again. The backwards tapes of "Dreams Recourring" reveal the torment, brushing against incommunicability. A choice must be made. After all, life is a continuous act of choosing, among a thousand utopias. "Indecision Time" unleashes another frontal assault. Machine-gun bursts of guitar and pounding drums. Norton miraculously (de)composed on bass. But you don't escape your own tormented fantasies so easily. Everything churns in the brain like the rattles of "Hare Krsna", amid a deafening rite of initiation. The road is that of discovering the only true reality: that of our soul. And this soul is turned toward pain; it curses, it thrashes, it blasphemes. There's no escape. The body burns, the spirit burns, everything burns. The scream traces the outlines of anguish; the boundaries of the real melt away downward. Amid smashed chairs and battered instruments come "Beyond The Threshold" and "Pride" one after another: hardcore to the third power; hardcore as only Hüskers knew how to deliver it. "I'll Never Forget You" is Mould at his peak: his Ibanez Flying V drills, digs, disintegrates. It enters your heart without knocking. It's over in an instant... just an instant. But how much it hurts, how much! What's happening? What's happening inside my head? "What's Goin On" offers no answers. It just carries on its way. But doesn't that bass have something of Sonic Youth about it? Yes, of course: dissonant shortcuts: shortcuts. Like the biggest lies, which lead to the abyss, to settling the score for all our defeats and all our illusions ("The Biggest Lie").

The storm is a perpetual clot of seething sound in "Masochism World": an accelerated crash course for all the halfwits who still think they've understood what "punk" is... Then, for a moment, it seems the calm has returned. The waves chase each other and break themselves against the shore. Sitting on the water's edge, letting yourself be caressed by tears. Here, facing this sea; facing this unclassifiable, untranslatable language ("Standing By The Sea"). But there's still time to delude yourself... To delude yourself that somewhere... yes, deep down... That's why "Somewhere" rings out with drive, in a kind of slowed-down slam-dance. "One Step At A Time" and "Monday Will Be The Same" illuminate the band's tenderest side, with two sweet little piano sonatas. Once again: an instant, just an instant. The heavenly walls of guitar return in all their splendor in the poppy "Pink Turns To Blue". But nothing compares to "Newest Industry", 3 minutes and 05 seconds in which Hüsker Dü grab you and carry you away, with no escape; you can only ask yourself: "Is it possible to capture youth within a scenario at once apocalyptic and frighteningly vital?". And again: "Is it possible to do it all again with "Whatever", to let yourself be tortured by Mould's voice, by his guitar with its whiff of "shoegazer", by this whole sublime hymn to the disruptive, crushing force of youth?". Then again, wasn't the shoegazer phenomenon the equivalent of zen for the punk generation? And so it all comes together, it all makes sense...

Then, behind all this, psychedelia: the mind in search of itself. A tortuous, immense labyrinth. Like "The Tooth Fairy And The Princess". Like the final nightmare of "Recourring Dreams". Yes, okay: there's still something to say about the ode to the Clash that is "Turn On The News", but let's focus for a moment on these final (get this...) barely 14 minutes of glissando, distortion and guitar dissonance. Fourteen minutes of pauses, sprints, freedom and dreams, turmoil, hisses, apocalyptic miniatures and torments, loves that come and loves that go, pain... joy... the (sublime) other side of a landmark album. And if after all this devastation you still want to hear an ode to the Clash, that's your problem...

"Zen Arcade". Or "Of Youth".

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

30/10/2006