I THINK MY BRAIN IS FULL

When I was about 15 years old, I wanted nothing more than to be able to play the guitar like J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. Well, that and a few sweaty hours with Cindy Crawford, trying to remove that mole from her face. The first gig I went to that wasn’t in either a pub or a school drama theater was Dinosaur Jr, at the Brixton Academy, sometime in 1992. Yeah. I’m old school. Sort of. The last band I saw that weren’t in a pub was the reformed original line up of Dinosaur Jr, at ATP in 2006. They were awesome. Their music always seems to hit me at pivotal moments in my life. I’ll be honest, the gig coincided with my marriage dissolving with frightening synchronicity. I watched them with my wife, who I was on the verge of leaving, while the girl that would become my girlfriend was no less than 10 metres away. I’ll admit, I would rather have been watching them with her.

So, of course, I was delighted to hear that their reformation had led to a new album - Beyond. J, Lou and Murph, back together at last. I envisaged an album full of songs about girls that had left J Mascis feeling low, rejected and weary. I imagined an album full of songs that crunched and fuzzed with brittle, heart-felt fret noodling and chiming choruses. Basically, I expected it to sound and feel like the first three albums, which I cherish.

Put simply, that’s what I got. Beyond is a good album, as in terms of Dinosaur Jr and what you might expect from them, it delivers exactly what you want. It ticks every box. There are many songs that start with “I’ve been…” and choruses that ask “Can I…”. There’s a song by Lou. Murph pounds his drums while Lou and J engage in an over-drive fueled duel. But that’s it. The album doesn’t feel like they’ve progressed at all in the last 19 years, since they dropped Bug. In fact, the album almost feels like a bunch of out-takes from Bug.

To be fair, I quite liked the album. It was good just to have them back. There are a couple of songs that sweep through the brain with a sense of familiarity and I could almost picture them in the studio, having fun again. In my mind, they looked a lot younger. The youthful exuberance that punched you in the face on You’re Living all over me was gone. Despite that, the songs chug along with the same pace as they should, and J’s just-got-out-of-bed-alone voice still has the slightly nasal quality that made me feel, as a teenager, that you didn’t have to be a picture-perfect pop model to play music. The album opener, Almost Ready, has a pop-fury that hadn’t been heard since the days of Bug, and album closer, What If I Knew, brings the proceedings to a satisfying halt. But there’s nothing new here to make you feel like Dinosaur Jr are back and on top of their game.

When I saw them last year at ATP, just seeing them come on stage together gave me a bit of a rush and the selection of songs they played was simply awesome. Everything I wanted to hear was covered and there seemed to be a fresh fire in their bellies. They almost seemed to be enjoying each other’s company. Sure, Lou looked a little like he wanted to bottle J when he went off on a fret-wank at one point, but there was a wry smile on his face that suggested that he had come to expect this. He even got to play some of his songs. When they launched into Forget The Swan, I felt 15 again.

However, the cynic in me can see that this is probably just an attempt to recoup some money, as, lets face it, J Mascis and the Fog were very disappointing and the rerelease of the first three albums gave them an opportunity to start earning again. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they wound up in some exec’s office and looked at each other and thought “Perhaps we made a mistake when we split up”. I get a feeling that Beyond will be the last album they record together. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as they leave behind quite a legacy. But they’re all old now and J’s grey hair alone is enough to suggest that their time has come and gone. They certainly still rock super-hard in a way that only Dinosaur ever could, but there just isn’t room for a bunch of old men mithering about how the girls they fancy don’t know they’re there in a world full of Emo-big-band nonsense and nu-metal.

So, I guess I should leave you with a couple of then-and-now clips, so you can make up your own mind. First, here’s Dinosaur playing Freak Scene, way back when they were still young.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxLpEX2bt8w

And finally, here’s Dinosaur now, playing Forget The Swan on The Henry Rollins Show. It’s a great performance, but you can see that deep down, they’ve really all just had enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6WLkyxySA0