Wednesday, October 31, 2018

resonators 2018 - episode #010 - 'zen arcade' by hüsker dü

There are folks who are saying that I should have covered this album months ago, that it is undoubtedly a seminal classic in pushing the genre forward and laying the groundwork for what would come. And that I'm only covering it now might be viewed in some camps as being a half-step behind, especially given that I've expressed a lack of familiarity with its subgenre before.

And here's my counterpoint: I see the argument for talking about Hüsker Dü earlier, but I'd argue it was more important for me to see the groundwork of hardcore punk get laid rather than jump straight to the concept album that's widely considered a classic of post-hardcore in helping define the genre, which is the biggest reason why I've put off covering this project for so long. Now some would argue it makes more sense to start with Hüsker Dü's debut album Everything Falls Apart - it was still produced by Spot even though this Minnesota group hadn't signed to SST - but at that point you could make the argument that Hüsker Dü hadn't come into their own just yet. They had never fully considered themselves a hardcore group, but the band was looking to get a lot more ambitious in their song construction and choice of instrumentation - albeit with a recording method that seemed to owe a lot more to hardcore punk, recording nearly every track as a first take within a forty hour window, and in a second forty hour window mixing and mastering it all! I mean, I've got to admire the dogged determination to hammer this out, but I had to wonder how well that would hold up in comparison to their labelmates and quasi-rivals Minutemen who put out the legit classic Double Nickels On The Dime that same year. But enough dancing around this one, let's get to it: we're talking about the critically acclaimed, concept-driven double album from Hüsker Dü, Zen Arcade, and this is Resonators!

So there are two parts to the conversation surrounding Zen Arcade, and they both present somewhat different questions than I normally approach on Resonators, firstly because this is a narrative-driven concept album and I have my own set of criteria when it comes to how to evaluate those projects, and the other... well, we'll get to it, but I'm sure anybody who is familiar with any critical appraisal of this album and my tastes would be able to take a guess, especially as I'm going to come here and say that while Zen Arcade is a really damn good project, I might struggle to put it among my favourites to come out of this period.

And this is not to discount the ambition and genre-pushing side of this album: sure, the foundation was laid in hardcore punk, but there are slower, more tuneful songs and cuts that bring in differing tones and styles, from the psychedelic warping of guitars to intentionally trigger the ambiguous narrative to some keyboard tones that absolutely have the sound and tone of an electric piano from the mid-80s - not bashing them, just an observation. And that's before we get into the narrative influence, and I'm not going to mince words about this: if you listen to Zen Arcade, it's very hard to ignore the parallels to Quadrophenia by The Who, which just so happens to be one of my favourite albums of all time. The teenage alienation, the social groups warring for control of our protagonist's soul, the departures from home into an increasingly hostile world that inevitably winds up by the seaside - hell, but for the ending twist which we'll address, much of the dramatic arc and storytelling remains the same. Now what's important to note is that Quadrophenia is a very British album, drenched in the iconography of turbulent late 60s, early 70s culture - very different than the American cultural foundation of Zen Arcade and it shows. For one, the broken nuclear family receives a lot more attention in setting the scene, and instead of the dichotomies of mods and rockers, we see alienation from military service and spiritualism. And by design there is a level of greater introspection in confronting those of privilege and his degenerating relationship with his lover thanks to drugs on this project - this is a project wracked by rootless guilt and a feeling of helplessness, both for any sense of deeper fulfillment and his inability to save others, with the larger point that this is increasingly true about everyone in their own way as systems collapse and people are left stranded. And while those who have thrived in the system look on in dismay, completely unaware how their neglect or lack of responsibility has allowed all this to happen, at the end of the day it's all left open as to whatever could come next...

Until we reach the final songs where - spoiler alert, but seriously, this album came out nearly thirty-five years ago, I shouldn't need this - it's all revealed to be just a dream and that we need to move past the programmed narratives of media to actually 'talk' to each other, that so much of this disillusionment and breakdown, subconscious or not, is a failure of communication and understanding. Now on the one hand, I'll give Hüsker Dü a lot of credit for setting this up well - while the language in many of these songs might feel simplistic and direct, the abstraction does work for a dreamlike state while maintaining that hardcore bluntness. And hell, with cuts like 'Dreams Reoccurring' setting up Chekhov's Gun and the general introverted state of the album, it makes sense that there's no tangible contact with other people if it's all in his own head - the protagonist is more observer than engaged outright. And yet while I appreciate this and I can certainly respect the influence - especially when you realize how much Green Day cribbed notes from this album for American Idiot, even down to some specific arcs and lines - there are two significant issues I take and the first is with the choice to make it all a dream. I've rarely been fond of this in fiction - unless we get a significant cut of reality right after the dream ends, it does a number on the stakes of the story, especially when it feels like said dream is just to set up the moral through 'Turn On The News' before the extended outro of warping guitar feedback. My second issue ties into the language: yeah, I don't have a problem with blunt abstraction and I get how they want to frame this album as realistic as possible to hide the punchline, but the larger point that our protagonist will still face all of these issues going forward doesn't obscure how the parents, the girlfriends, and societal institutions might behave in the exact same way regardless of the dream - hell, that inability to change the outcome might not be flipped because he woke up, despite that subtext otherwise.

But really, that avoids the larger issue of this project and one that I've been on the fence to discuss: the production. And again, it's not even so much that it's bad but that it's inconsistent, heavily reliant on first takes where it's hard to ignore the slapdash nature of a few cuts. And that's to say nothing of a rushed mixing and mastering process where the basslines are always prominent thanks to Spot, but drums can sound really muddy, fuzzed out guitars clash with vocals where it's hit-and-miss if you can make out anything coherent, and all of it has a lo-fi quality that can vary in pickup from song to song, especially in the guitar tone. And again, I can see why critics of the time gave it a pass: hardcore punk gets all the passes in the world when it comes to cheap lo-fi mixing and you can make the argument that the hazy dream-logic even justifies the shifts in mix quality... and that's where I draw a line, because that excuse can justify a more diverse soundscape but not the quality of the mixes themselves. And honestly it's a shame this is such a consistent issue, because despite a pretty distorted tone, the guitars carry a fair amount of tune and while the reliance on first takes indicates that there will be moments that feel clumsier than they should, there are strong underlying compositions here that could use mixing that didn't feel so flat and lacking in consistent dynamics. What's exasperating is that there are a few songs that Hüsker Dü did record with more than one take and showed a little more care with the production, and given the ambition behind the concept, I'm a little baffled why that just wasn't considered, because you wind up with songs like 'Turn On The News' and 'Something I Learned Today' and especially 'Pink Turns To Blue' sounding excellent along side songs like 'Chartered Trips' and 'I'll Never Forget You' and 'Masochism World' and 'Somewhere' on the cusp of really working if the vocals or guitars or drums were mixed and mastered a little better - or in the case of 'Pride', put together properly at all. Hell, even some of the more experimental and proto-post-hardcore songs manage to survive this process a little better like 'Whatever' and the warping waves of 'Standing By The Sea'... but on the flipside, you get cuts like 'Hare Krsna' with the sleigh bells mixed into grainy fragments right at the front of the mix or 'The Tooth Fairy And The Princess' playing with reversed guitar leads and binaural mixing that would sound impressive if it didn't feel like the cheapest shorthand for dreamlike disorientation. And while we're on that subject, the closing cut 'Reoccurring Dreams' that runs for fourteen minutes has its fans, but I'm not exactly one of them - it's gratuitous, its placement feels weird after the moral is delivered on 'Turn On The News', and while it's certainly a callback, I'm not sure it adds enough at its length - I bet even a lot of fans of the album skip it.

But as a whole... look, I completely get why punks and critics loved this album: it's wildly ambitious while being mostly accessible, and you can't deny that it helped lay some of the groundwork for experimentation in the genre going forward, it has a foundational place that my opinion can't take away. But it's a foundational piece that feels worse for wear nearly thirty-five years later: when you look at the production it feels rushed and slapdash, and while the concept works, I'm not sure it's got the depth of its contemporaries, both before and after. And for the record, this was a concern of critics at the time who were worried this wouldn't age quite as well as those declaring it a classic would proclaim... and yeah, I kind of agree with that. Nevertheless, it's a damn good album, netting a very solid 7/10 from me and absolutely a recommendation, with the qualifiers that I can nitpick when it comes to production and lyrics and that I don't have the same familiarity with post-hardcore that might lend this more replay to that audience. But hey, while like most arcades it might seem a bit worse for wear, Zen Arcade does mostly hold up - check it out.

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