Five years on from Candy Apple Grey, the roster of every major label would be heaving with angry young rock & roll powered by surging electric guitars, howling vocals and non-specific angst. This, of course, was a result of the success of Nirvana's Nevermind. However, as Nirvana themselves never shied from admitting, Nirvana's Nevermind was, in a major way, a result of Husker Du, and specifically Husker Du's Candy Apple Grey. It is probably the first major label grunge album; the Minneapolis trio had already racked up around half a dozen albums of superior and weirdly tuneful punk rock before Warners signed them. Candy Apple Greywasn't markedly different from any of its indie predecessors in terms of style--basically Bob Mould's buzzsaw guitar and jet-engine vocal competing to be heard over a rhythm section playing with the speed and abandon of a runaway locomotive--but the songs had never been this good before. In drummer Grant Hart's "Don't Want To Know If You're Lonely" and Mould's "Eiffel Tower High", Husker Du came up with a giddying hybrid of Black Sabbath and The Byrds. Elsewhere, Mould's acoustic "Hardly Getting Over It" amounted to the beginning of his absurdly overlooked solo career. Candy Apple Grey was the sort of dazzling, unnerving record that made people want to form bands of their own. The fact that so many of these bands were formed in and around Seattle is a phenomenon as yet unexplained by science. --Andrew Mueller
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