The 1985 Project Part 6: Hüsker Dü - Flip Your Wig

They put out two albums and both were adored by critics

I forgot to mention last week that this ongoing project is looking into the albums of 40 years back, starting with the ones which showed up in the 1985 Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll and eventually looking at as many other albums as I’ll be able to cover.

Hüsker Dü – Flip Your Wig

Hüsker Dü did not follow any rules, other than the imperative to have catchy and propulsive songs. (And honestly, they didn’t even always care if they were catchy, but they sure did have a lot that stuck in the old noggin.) Bob Mould played guitar with an excess of volume and distortion, and a highly unconventional knowledge of chords and harmonic structure. Greg Norton’s basslines were firm and steady, but buried way below the rest of the sound. Grant Hart’s drumming was clearly self-taught, with a heavy use of the bass drum and cymbals, and a love of extra beats and wild fills. Both Mould and Hart sang/screamed bursts of melody. Nothing signified emotional connection so much as a combination of aggression and exuberance.

Flip Your Wig was the second of two Hüsker Dü albums in 1985, with the first, New Day Risingshowing up two spots lower on the Pazz and Jop Poll that year. I’ve pretty much always thought Flip was the better of the two, but I’ll tell you in a couple weeks if my opinion stands. For now, let’s talk about this record which has never failed to get my adrenalin up when I’ve heard it.

I pulled so hard for these guys to take over the pop music world in 1985, and cheered them on when they signed to the major label Warner Brothers Records for their next two (and final) releases. I understand now why they were much more suited to a cult audience for most of the reasons I mentioned above. There was no compromising from this band – they sounded the way they wanted to sound, and they wrote songs they wanted to hear themselves. At the time, and surrounded by people who loved them the way I loved them, it seemed inevitable they could become huge. In retrospect, they were too punk for pop, too pop for punk, and too incandescent to be put in the background. When they were heard, they were either accepted, or disliked.

The best songs on this record – “Hate Paper Doll,” “Flip Your Wig,” “Green Eyes,” Divide and Conquer,” and most especially “Makes No Sense At All” – are simple and gigantic. Mould and Hart were clearly churning out songs trying to impress the other, coming up with more and more indelible hooks, with riffs and rhythms and tunes that were put together in ways that couldn’t be torn apart. It seems they were always on the road back then, or else in the studio – between 1984 and 1987 they churned out two double albums and three single albums (not to mention some non-LP cuts). After signing to Warner Brothers, though, internal tensions led to a break-up (if I remember correctly a day or two after I saw them last.)

Flip Your Wig front-loaded its best material onto side one though “Flexible Flyer” and “Keep Hanging On” are pretty great, too. The album ends with two instrumentals – “The Wit and the Wisdom” and the backwards-masked “Don’t Know Yet.” I still find it interesting that these songs fit the record while also standing apart from the eleven vocal tracks before them. (There was also the weird and short “The Baby Song” earlier on side two, but that may have been a drug-induced insistence on being weird.) Hüsker Dü knew how to spit out memorable, inventive, and powerful hardcore punk-adjacent songs but they also liked to shut up and play loud and fast and clear.

I remember interviewing Grant Hart before a concert shortly after this record came out. Word came to the van that Chuck Berry was in the audience, and Hart became very nervous that he would be playing in front of a rock legend. That is something I always remember about Hüsker Dü – despite the obvious originality and sense of the new in their music, they connected themselves to a legacy that may not have been upfront and obvious but which shared ideas of freedom and exhilaration with music that had come before.

I think this is still worth 9 out of 10 points.