Name: Flip Your Wig
Brand: SST
SKU: 86243
Price: 19.97 USD
Availability: InStock

Flip Your Wig

Rating

Performer Notes

Hsker D: Grant Hart (slide whistle); Greg Norton, Bob Mould (bass instrument).
Personnel: Bob Mould (vocals, guitar, piano, percussion, background vocals); Grant Hart (vocals, vibraphone, drums, percussion, background vocals).
Recording information: Nicollet Studios, Minneapolis, MN (03/1985-06/1985).
Husker Du followed up 1985's NEW DAY RISING with FLIP YOUR WIG that same year--and it is in some ways strikingly different than the band's previous output. For the first time, the group took hold of the production reins themselves, and the sound is clearer and more balanced than ever before (which is not to say that they have gone soft). Still snarling and burning, Husker's furious attack is unchanged by crisper production values, but there are hooks aplenty and gentler touches like Grant Hart's high harmony vocals on "Hate Paper Doll" and "Makes No Sense At All."
Kicking off with the spine-chilling title track, on which Mould and Hart alternate vocals, FLIP YOUR WIG speeds along like a fine-tuned muscle car. Mould rails with trademark bile on "Private Plane" and the frenetic, accusatory "Divide and Conquer," while Hart remains the band's de facto romantic. His ominous love song "Green Eyes" is one of the standouts here, along with the relatively straightforward rocker "Flexible Flyer," an ode to failed childhood dreams. The record ends in a haze of backward cymbals and guitars on the hypnotic, swirling instrumental, "Don't Know Yet."