On the face of it,"Warehouse:Songs And Stories" ( a double on vinyl, single CD) is a wonderful valediction: a towering, happy-sad collection of 20 naggingly cohesive punk-pop nuggets from an all-cylinders-firing trio boasting two superb songwriters.
Indeed, every time you play "Warehouse: Songs And Stories" you still get pangs of disappointment that the trail ends here, whatever successes Bob and Grant would later enjoy.
It's tempting to view "Warehouse.." as "Zen Arcade"s older, wiser brother, still kicking out the jams on occasion, but with more of a resigned smile on its' face rather than a nihilistic scowl. Most of its' highlights (and there's lots) reek of experience and dislocation, whether from Mould's pen - "Ice Cold Ice", "Bed Of Nails","Up In The Air" - or Hart's with "She's A Woman(And Now He Is A Man)" or "Too Much Spice."
Beneath the surface, though, tensions were becoming unbearable. Under pressure from Warners the band were turning animosity on themselves. Mould told Hart specifically to present only 9 songs here (he would deliver 11), while Hart's heroin habit was becoming a strain for all concerned. The band remember their final US tour in October 1987 as particularly harrowing with Hart on one occasion too strung out to perform. The final straw, though, was the unexpected suicide of manager and friend David Savoy. Expecting an already troubled band to recover from this tragedy would have been inhuman and HUSKER DU announced tersely they'd gone their separate ways at the dawn of 1988.
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Public acrimony between Bob and Grant would continue on and off over the next few years, though - while we're glad to report relations have since improved again - it would be a crying same to let inconsequential bitching (from any quarter) over shadow the legacy of soaraway, hi-octane splendour bequeathed by this mounumental Minnesota trio.
To finish, a quick truism. No HUSKER DU = No PIXIES = No NIRVANA. Difficult to refute in our book.
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