SPRING ALBUM ROUNDUP : HUSKER HURLS A CHANGE-UP

“CANDY APPLE GREY.” Husker Du. Warner Bros.

Minneapolis rock band with impeccable underground credentials makes the move from small independent label to big-time record company.

That was the line on the Replacements last year, and exactly the same applies now to Husker Du, the trio whose early hard-core velocity has been gradually easing up to reveal a bracing blend of rock power and pop finesse.

On “Candy Apple Grey,” though, they really throw a change-up: The core of the album isn’t the hard stuff, but a batch of ballads. Not the kind of lush, booming ballads that Foreigner fans swoon over. In “Too Far Down,” for instance, Bob Mould’s coarse, ragged vocal sends a rough-hewn expression of wintry despair over surges of acoustic chording. And “Hardly Getting Over It” is right up there with R.E.M. for haunting, mumbled mystery.

Even though the ballads (rounded out by the achingly pretty “No Promise Have I Made”) are outnumbered by the rockers, their strength centers the album, like an atom’s nucleus. Whirling around it are a batch of uptempo tracks with the customary Husker Du virtues: an attack that digs in while the hooks soar, nifty lyrics (most of them take on busted romance this time), raging, rip-roaring playing and an overall no-nonsense, down-to-earth charm.