Numero Group has announced a new live album from Hüsker Dü. 1985: The Miracle Year is a 4xLP box set that captures the Minneapolis punk band onstage at First Avenue during its fiery SST era. It’s out November 7, but several selections have already been released online. Below, listen to excerpts from a November show in Salt Lake City and a January concert at First Avenue.
1985: The Miracle Year centers on an entire Hüsker Dü set from January 30, 1985, as restored by Beau Sorenson. It also includes 20 extra live tracks from the same year, as well as a deluxe booklet outlining the year of work that went into the tour.
The live performances captured on these recordings are a snapshot of the band at the height of its power; Hüsker Dü had released Zen Arcade the year prior, and followed it with New Day Rising in January 1985. Both albums are punk classics. The fact these tapes survived the 2011 house fire that destroyed a portion of the Hüsker Dü archive heightens the rarity of this collection.
This isn’t Numero Group’s first time archiving material from Hüsker Dü. In 2017, the Chicago-based reissue label released Savage Young Dü, a box set of the band’s early recordings and live tapes from their first three years. That year, the trio’s drummer and co-founder Grant Hart died of cancer.
Revisit the feature “The Story of Hüsker Dü’s Grant Hart, in His Own Words.”
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1985: The Miracle Year:
01 New Day Rising
02 It’s Not Funny Anymore
03 Everything Falls Apart
04 The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill
05 I Apologize
06 If I Told You
07 Folklore
08 Every Everything
09 Makes No Sense at All
10 Terms of Psychic Warfare
11 Powerline
12 Books About UFOs
13 Broken Home, Broken Heart
14 Diane
15 Hate Paper Doll
16 Green Eyes
17 Divide and Conquer
18 Pink Turns to Blue
19 Eight Miles High
20 Out on a Limb
21 Helter Skelter
22 Ticket to Ride
23 Love Is All Around
01 Don’t Want to Know If You’re Lonely
02 I Don’t Know for Sure
03 Hardly Getting Over It
04 Sorry Somehow
05 Eiffel Tower High
06 What’s Going
07 Private Plane
08 Celebrated Summer
09 All Work and No Play
10 Keep Hanging On
11 Find Me
12 Flexible Flyer
13 Sunshine Superman
14 In a Free Land
15 Somewhere
16 Flip Your Wig
17 Never Talking to You Again
18 Chartered Tips
19 The Wit and the Wisdom
20 Misty Modern Days