Flip Your Wig

Spot -- SST's house producer who manned the boards for Zen Arcade and New Day Rising -- didn't produce Flip Your Wig, Husker Du's second album of 1985, and the difference is immediately noticeable. Everything on Flip Your Wig is cleaner and brighter than on its two immediate predecessors, which is appropriate, considering that Bob Mould and Grant Hart have only increased their debt to '60s pop. The hooks and melodies are on the surface, right from the kick-start call-and-response of the title track. On paper, it might sound as if Husker Du have watered down their hardcore ideals, but it doesn't play that way. Flip Your Wig is pop played as punk, as if this is the only time these songs could ever be heard. Which means Hart's love song "Green Eyes" and Mould's pure pop single "Makes No Sense at All" are delivered with the same rage and passion as Mould's blistering "Divide and Conquer" and Hart's "Keep Hanging On," or the pair of surging, neo-psychedelic and noise-wracked instrumentals that close the album. Flip Your Wig would be a remarkable record on its own terms, but the fact that it followed New Day Rising by a matter of months and Zen Arcade by just over a year is simply astonishing. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine