Flip Your Wig is the fourth album by American band Hüsker Dü, released in September 1985. It was the band's first self-produced album. It was the best-selling album to that point for the band's label SST Records, and the last album they made for that label. The band spent months in the studio to achieve higher-quality production for the album's melodic power pop songs.
Production
By 1985 Hüsker Dü was the best-selling band on SST Records. The band had wanted to produce their previous album New Day Rising, but SST insisted on sending long-time label producerSpot. With Flip Your Wigthe band was finally allowed to self-produce. Recording took place over several sessions in the band's hometown of Minneapolis from March to June 1985, by far the longest the band had spent in the studio. The cleaner production complemented the more melodic songs, still performed with heavily distorted guitars in a high-powered manner.
Songs
Guitarist Bob Mould and drummer Grant Hart each wrote roughly half the songs, which continued the band's trend toward power pop and away from the fast, noisy hardcore punk of their earliest material. "Makes No Sense at All" was released as a single, with "Love Is All Around" on the b-side. The "Makes No Sense at All" video was the band's first. "Makes No Sense at All" was the band's first song to achieve significant airplay on album-oriented rock radio.
Release and reception
Flip Your Wig appeared via SST in September 1985. It débuted at No. 5 on the CMJalbum charts and received more radio airplay and mainstream press attention than the band's earlier releases, including stories in Creem, Spin, Rolling Stone. Robert Christgau declared in The Village Voice that with the album's production the band had "never sounded so good", and the album placed in the top ten of the magazine's critics' poll for 1985 along with New Day Rising. Flip Your Wig became SST's best-selling album at the time of its release, moving 50,000 copies in its first four months. By the time the album was released Hüsker Dü had signed a record deal with the major-labelWarner Music Group, who were keen to release the album themselves. However, out of loyalty, and because of SST's appointment of new promotions manager Ray Farrell, the album was given to SST. Decades later, Bob Mould saw Flip Your Wig as "the best album Hüsker Dü ever did". Ira Robbins and John Leland at Trouser Press describe the album as "Positively brilliant — fourteen unforgettable pop tunes played like armageddon were nigh" and rate "Makes No Sense at All" as "one of 1985's best 45s". AllMusic's review says "Flip Your Wig would be a remarkable record on its own terms, but the fact that it followed New Day Rising by a matter of months and Zen Arcade by just over a year is simply astonishing."
