HÜSKER PÖLL: Warehouse - Songs and Stories

When I was pretty young I saw the Could You Be the One video on MTV and it sort of altered my idea of what music was. So that one.

Voted "Ice Cold Ice" just over "Friend, You've Got to Fall". Hart does not do much for me on this album. "You Can Live at Home" is cool though.

i said upthread that warehouse is among the best closing albums of an act's career. it got me wondering what other discs would even be under consideration and how they stack-up against each other.

The Go-Betweens' 16 Lovers Lane (or Oceans Apart, if you like).

yeah, in the go-betweens' case, i think you'd have to consider oceans apart the final disc.

"She Floated Away", with "You Can Live At Home" close behind. Never could tell Mould's songs apart on this one.

I'd never considered how Warehouse would look if it had been stripped down to a single, but now that I have; THIS is exactly (more or less) how it would look.

Standing In The Rain - Mould 3:41
Ice Cold Ice - Mould 4:23
Could You Be The One? - Mould 2:32
Friend, You've Got To Fall - Mould 3:20
Turn It Around - Mould 4:32

Back From Somewhere - Hart 2:16
She Floated Away - Hart 3:32
Tell You Tomorrow - Hart 2:42
She's A Woman (And Now He Is A Man) - Hart 3:19
You Can Live At Home - Hart 5:25

Assuming a 10 song album and 5 songs apiece for Grant and Bob.

Turn It Around and Tell You Tomorrow are the ones I'm least certain about including by each songwriter. The rest are non-negotiable.

My version of the album, with some reshuffling:
Standing in the Rain
Too Much Spice
Actual Condition
These Important Years
She Floated Away

Tell You Why Tomorrow
Ice Cold Ice
She's a Woman (And Now He Is a Man)
Up in the Air
You Can Live at Home

I have an unreasonable love for 'Actual Condition' which as a poster above notes doesn't really sound like Husker Du at all, but I take it as Hart's goofy stab at shambolic rockabilly, with Hart doing his best-worst Elvis impersonation. It's also the only Hart-penned track where it sounds like Mould is enjoying himself.
But going with 'Ice Cold Ice' as my favorite, which has always been the song that grabs my ear when I have the album on as background music. I'm a sucker for call and response.
I find the album a little unwieldy, but I have a hard time selecting outright duds. I would still like an album made up entirely of the songs I cut out of my above version of the album. I don't currently care for 'Bed of Nails' very much, though in the past I've found it at least interesting. Now I think it wears out its welcome somewhere around the two minute mark.

No Could You Be The One? Really? That's a surprise, I'd have had that down as dead cert for inclusion in anyone's POX.

She Floated Away and You Can Live At Home are great side-closers.

No Could You Be The One? Really? That's a surprise, I'd have had that down as dead cert for inclusion in anyone's POX.

Mould's lack of inflection in that song annoys me. I usually like the conversational cadence of Mould's singing, but the flatness of his reading in this instance hinders the song. I think one reason I like Hart's songs better on this album is that Hart really sounds like he's experimenting vocally, trying on various personas and styles to suit different songs, while Mould's vocals don't contain many surprises.

Officer Pupp single album OTM except i'd replace 'Turn It Around' with 'These Important Years'.

First and last songs are my favorite. Voted for "These Important Years" but on further listening I think I should have voted for "You Can Live At Home". It's one of the best final songs on final albums there is.

Only time I ever saw them live was this tour, when they were playing the whole thing through in order. One of the more memorable shows I've been to, more than partially because they had such musical power with so little stage charisma. I remember seeing Black Sabbath on the Dehumanizer tour at the same venue, not that long after; a polar opposite in some senses, and yet...

I'm tend to fall further into the Mould camp but "You Can Live At Home" hits with such euphoria from 2.04 onward that it's just wrong to not give it the vote.

But something that hit me the other day while listening to "Charity, Chastity...": it's a great song that's been saddled with a really monochromatic and uninteresting guitar line.

I thought the same thing when listening to "Too Much Spice".

Really heartened to see all the 'You Can Live At Home' love itt.

Did I dream a Zen Arcade poll? I can't find it anywhere.

I don't remember a Zen Arcade poll myself but that would probably be a good one too...really not sure where I'd lean on that one at all!

there should be a poll for individual tracks, and also for sides of vinyl

"Greg's album" would be "Everytime" (B-side of "Could You Be the One")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgh8j8-EUEo

How many uncollected Hüsker Dü b-sides (or compilation appearances) were there? There's Everything Falls Apart And More for the early stuff, but would there be enough to actually warrant another compilation?

judging by all the bootlegs, yes.

i'm going with the opening track here for the high school nostalgia.

I always loved Could You Be the One

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Mould: 40 total votes.

Hart: 27.

wow, i was the only vote for No Reservations? Maybe I just don't ~get~ Husker Du...

As much as I'm a Bob stan, seriously o_O about "Too Much Spice" and "Tell You Tomorrow" getting goose eggs here...but then hey, I'm the only one to vote for "Turn It Around" too, so.

THE RIGHT SONG WON!!!

i prefer the hart songs in hindsight but "too much spice" is by far the worst. "tell you why tomorrow" is great tho and deserved some votes.

So the official reduced 10-track ILM Warehouse would resemble:

Side 1
These Important Years
Could You Be The One?
Friend, You've Got To Fall
It's Not Peculiar
She Floated Away

Side 2
She's A Woman (And Now He Is A Man)
Standing In The Rain
Up In The Air
Ice Cold Ice
You Can Live At Home

While there's some quibble-room here and there, ILM pretty much OTM.

Let's do a Zen Arcade poll! (If i knew how to set one up, I would, but I don't... so...)

Click on the link at the top of the page that says New Poll! And away you go.

The answer is Chartered Trips

An answer to an as-yet-unasked question is about as Zen as it gets!

wow, i was the only vote for No Reservations?

I would have voted for it, if it didn't have the lyric, "Sit by a lake and cry"

man, the beginning of ice cold ice is so "classic rock" and perfect
wish they had stuck it out for at least one more record

hart over mould here by a whisker imo

So the official reduced 10-track ILM Warehouse would resemble:

Side 1
These Important Years
Could You Be The One?
Friend, You've Got To Fall
It's Not Peculiar
She Floated Away

Side 2
She's A Woman (And Now He Is A Man)
Standing In The Rain
Up In The Air
Ice Cold Ice
You Can Live At Home

Just listened to the songs in listed order. I bet the album would certainly be considered differently had it come out like that. And this year the 25th anniversary reissue would have come out with the remaining ten bonus unreleased tracks, and critics would rave about how fucking genius songs like "Turn It Around" and "Charity, Chastity..." are and what a damn shame they weren't included on the original.

Went back to this record for the first time in some time. What a brilliant band and album. I keep replaying It's Not Peculiar.

I'm not someone who will be completely put off by the production that has been discussed ad nauseam, but it is a frustrating factor that will not go away, especially when dealing with an act who put out so many albums in a short space of time, with 2 double albums in 3 years. I've been dealing with Husker Du for nearly 20 years and it's STILL frustrating to hear a band like that on record.

Azerrad wrote in his book that "Husker Du never let anyone catch their breath". Why is this a good thing? Why would this matter to anyone over 20?

Bc it means they made lots of records?

I love the specificity of the Belvedere in "She's a Woman." It suits the meter of the line perfectly, which is maybe how it ended up there -- Grant thinking, I need an old car with three syllables -- but it is also so evocative of time/place/situation.

Azerrad wrote in his book that "Husker Du never let anyone catch their breath". Why is this a good thing? Why would this matter to anyone over 20?

Honestly, it should make them sad. The story with HD is that with each tour, at least until Warehouse, they were already playing plenty of stuff from their next album. What band does that anymore? Everyone's so cautious. A band constantly unveiling new stuff, especially a band of HD's caliber, would be super cool, and such an alternative to the bunch of stuff from the new album plus the best of the old albums model that most acts of all sizes embrace.

I've gotten so used to HD's "bad" production that I just consider it a facet of their identity at this point, like, I dunno, the first two Suede albums. I'm not even sure what a well produced HD album would sound like, or whether I'd want that, though "Flip Your Wig" sounds pretty great, and "Copper Blue" kind of gives us an idea. But again, it's the old Jimmy Page production/engineering/mixing adage at work: you can either have the guitars loud, or the drums loud, but you really can't have them both loud. Unless you want a full-on aaarrrgh! in the red sound, like HD.

I'd really like to see contemporaneous reviews complaining about their production. I was listening to them (on vinyl) in the US 80s/90s and it's not something that ever occurred to me, or that I recall reading much about. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but could we get some reviews from the time the records were released bitching about the production (and keeping in mind that indie production generally sucked at the time). My pet theory is that complaints about production parallel people listening at low volumes on earphones years after the fact, vs. loud volumes on speakers. Anyway, would have voted for You Can Live At Home, I think.

People who don't like the production on Hüsker Dü records should listen to some Replacements records.

Nice Strong Arm was a band from the time done in by bad production on their records. Husker Du, not so much.

Didn't Billy Zoom hate the production on X's records?

Spin review at the time references cleaner production. We've been over this a lot, but this "bad production Husker Du" crap needs to die for once and for all. https://books.google.com/books?id=dNSW1RIkidsC&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=husker+du+warehouse+spin&source=bl&ots=0sPg_Tnvro&sig=r8uvIoagAzmbLqYl3UFUYc7fq8g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiSs6eWurDOAhUIDxoKHZPKDcQQ6AEIQDAG#v=onepage&q=husker%20du%20warehouse%20spin&f=false

warehouse sounds better on vinyl imo

with plush production husker du might sound like sugar but i think they sound better as husker du, much as I loved sugar. maybe they're not supposed to have beefy drums or non-tinny guitars? maybe that was their actual aesthetic and if you don't like it you don't like husker du? maybe there are other bands out there and you don't have to continue to second guess a band who split up almost thirty years ago?

Who are you talking to? Because I've never heard anyone seriously complain about Husker Du production in the last 30 years.

But if someone wants a contemporaneous account, Christgau (no bigger booster) mentions it a lot in his reviews: http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=husker+du

But though I hate to sound priggish, I do think it could have used a producer. I mean, it was certainly groovy (not to mention manly) to record first takes and then mix down for forty hours straight, but sometimes the imperfections this economical method so proudly incorporates could actually be improved upon. It wouldn't be too much of a compromise to make sure everyone sings into the mike, for instance, and it's downright depressing to hear Bob Mould's axe gather dust on its way from vinyl to speakers. Who knows, put them in the studio with some hands-off technician--Richard Gottehrer, Tony Bongiovi, like that--and side two might even qualify as cathartic music rather than cathartic noise.

They've never sounded so good. Spot's gone, as are most of the cobwebs that obscured their clamor, so without kow-towing to Michael Wagener we really get to hear Bob Mould's guitar.

Etc. I think he's right and wrong for the reason you ('you') mention: that Husker Du sounds like Husker Du, and what might be technical imperfections don't hurt and even enhance this band's power. Especially on the SST albums. The WB albums, eh, I don't think they're badly produced, but I do think they made some bad decisions. Could have been a lot worse, given the times.