* PREORDER * HUSKER DU - 1985: The Miracle Year BOX (colour vinyl)

* PREORDER * expected to arrive Nov

4LP box. Blue colour vinyl, black and 2CD also available.

Looking at 1985 through the lens of independent DIY music, mid-decade, there was a year-long succession of leaps by Hüsker Dü, each building on the powerful and undeniable sprint from the scrappy punk institution SST to the artistic empathy of Warner Bros. As observers caught on, testimonials came from many quarters, including NY Times, which recognised the band as “the best to have emerged from the hardcore scene.”  After blowing the doors off the burgeoning alt-rock movement with Zen Arcade the previous July, the band dropped New Day Rising just six months later and then never stopped chasing the Hidden Beach sunrise that adorned that album’s cover.

On January 30, 1985, the 1500 attendees inside 1st Ave wouldn’t be needing so much as a T-shirt, let alone the nearest fiberfill parka: from the first blinding moments of “New Day Rising,” it was clear that Dü had arrived intent on setting every molecule in the room alight. Their setlist displayed a night-long cascade of fireballs chosen from Everything Falls Apart, Metal Circus, Zen Arcade, and New Day Rising, and 5 new songs that would appear on Flip Your Wig. They also made several nods, with a ballistic take on The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High,” a turbulent spin on The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” featuring Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner, a pop-punk remake of “Ticket To Ride, ” and closing with their signature cover “Love Is All Around.”

Considering the late-Jan 2011 fire that consumed a precious portion of the Dü archive, it has to be reckoned as a kind of subordinate miracle that the 1985 1st Ave tapes survived at all. They deliver peak Dü at full gallop through already beloved material, still years shy of fully cementing their status as a blueprint for the alternative rock skyscraper to come. This set celebrates these tapes, strikingly perhaps the highest fidelity Hüsker Dü recordings ever produced during the band’s lauded SST years.