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Beyond

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Dinosaur Jr.

 
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It’s been 19 years, but this band could still save your life.

  • We Say...

    Review by Michael Azerrad

    The best of the post-millennial spate of '80s alt-rock reunions — Mission of Burma, the Pixies and now Dinosaur Jr. — all hail from Massachusetts. Now, the Bay State is a fine and rocking place, but those bands succeeded not because of geography but because they embody one of rock's eternal verities: it's all about chemistry. When a particular group of musicians makes an incredible sound that no other combination of people can quite duplicate, that's a great band. And it's why, 19 years after their last album together, the superlative Bug, Lou Barlow, J Mascis and Murph not only sound just like Dinosaur Jr, they sound great.

    Mascis, the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the band, is a notorious perfectionist — just listen to the masterly layered guitar arrangements here — and no way was this album going to suck. But what's surprising is the energy and even joy that courses through this record like intravenous java, powering addictive songs liberally slathered with the velvety huzz that only extreme amplification can provide. But anyone of Dinosaur's generation looking for some insight into life and love at the dawn of middle age won't find what they're looking for here — just as the music harks back to the band's halcyon days, the words also find Mascis mired in the same self-effacing goo as he was back when Bush 41 was president. Even the album cover is pure vintage SST. Then again, who cares? Beyond rocks like a see-saw in a nor'easter.

    The drums are played very hard and impatiently, as if by a man late for a train, amplifier settings stand on the glowing orange precipice of meltdown, and the bass is a buzzing blur. Then there's Mascis' voice: somewhere between a croon, a croak, and a yawn, submerged in the distorted swirl. In other words, it's just like old times. That may also make it sound dated, but by this point Dinosaur Jr is classic rock, and like the best bands, they've staked out a sound big enough to wander around in for quite a long time.

    Opener "Almost Ready" is not just a rousng Sasquatch hootenanny, it's a wormhole straight to the spirit of '88; it seems like they included the cellphone ring right at the end (2:50) just to remind us what year it really is. It's vintage Dinosaur, not just for the "ear-bleeding country" sound that the band made into a groan heard 'round the world, but in Mascis' forlorn drawl, forever declaring disorientation and inadequacy. Yes, even though you're in your 40s you can still not have the faintest clue.

    But that's just the obligatory kick-start opener, the "Start Me Up" of Beyond — Mascis is savvy enough to save one of the best numbers for the second spot: "Crumble" steps into a swirling shoegazer bridge, with warping guitars pealing out gorgeous chords, just glorious, with Mascis typically throwing himself at the feet of his lover: "I got lost inside a lie," he whines. "With a smile you made it die." "Pick Me Up" mashes up Neil Young and Black Sabbath, a stark schematic of Dinosaur's component parts that gets obliterated by an utterly sublime passage as Mascis croons in duet with a wraith-like guitar melody that will make your hair stand on end, followed by a triumphal three-minute solo, like Leslie West fronting a pissed-off Crazy Horse. Three songs in, it's readily apparent that these guys are on fire, bashing out the songs with a gleeful disregard for finesse, stomping through the material like, well, like a dinosaur — and, whether impelled by pride or the promise of filthy lucre, hellbent on making some of the best music of their very elliptical career.

    Barlow has had so much success with his band Sebadoh that he's kind of become the indie rock version of Paul McCartney, the guy who was in a band before Wings. But although Barlow has made a name for himself as a sensitive singer-songwriter type, he can also strap on a bass, put his head down and kick out the freakin' jams. Sadly, perhaps revealingly, he's mixed quite low on the album — you can only really hear his bass on the songs he wrote. Barlow weighs in with "Back to Your Heart," a powerful, singalong, overamped folk dirge that packs nearly as much barely repressed rage as his other contribution, the foreboding "Lightning Bulb."

    Another winner is "This Is All I Came to Do," wherein Mascis confesses "Look, I've nothing left/ It's downhill as you can tell," but the singalong chorus is a blaze of glory replete with heroic guitar filigrees — exactly the kind of emotional rollercoaster Mascis is croaking about. The similarly country-esque "We're Not Alone" shows a gentler side the old Dinosaur never could have tapped into; still, Mascis can't resist tearing off a lengthy, flashy solo. Same with the Velvetsy "I Got Lost," in which Murph drops the merciless bashing and plays a mantric tom-tom pattern while Mascis pines in a Neil-like falsetto; it's not the strongest song of the bunch but in the midst of the torrential downpour of distortion and volume all around it, it's affecting.

    It's a wonder they didn't call the album Debaser — as ever, Mascis is forever begging forgiveness, declaring himself unworthy, lost and lonely, finding respite only in a lover's apparently bottomless indulgence. And as ever, the lyrics about troubled relationships could just as easily apply to the relationships within the band itself, adding an additional frisson of drama to the music. But as self-effacing as the lyrics are, the music is anything but: take, for instance, "It's Me" with its irresistibly swaggering, bad-ass riff and Tony Iommi-esque solo. Mascis is the last guitar hero — virtually every song has a lengthy six-string aria, Mascis slicing through the teeming changes with yet another wild, careening, and yet surely meticulously plotted solo. Like the best Dinosaur music, Beyond celebrates the link between self-doubt and self-indulgence, and in so doing, alchemizes angst into joy.

    This line-up exploded in 1989, after the band's internecine warfare, a psychological bloodbath of post-adolescent neurosis, began to explode into actual physical violence. For a long time, those guys really, really couldn't stand each other. (Take it from me, I wrote the book). But Barlow, Mascis and Murph had the maturity to realize that that was a long time ago, when they were not yet fully formed. For whatever reasons, whether personal or financial, they buried the hatchet so they could once again make beautiful music together. Would that we could all do the same.

  • They Say...

    Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

    More than most bands, Dinosaur Jr. left behind some unfinished business -- not just in one regard but two. First, there was the notoriously acrimonious dismissal of original bassist Lou Barlow after the group's third album, Bug, just before the band made the leap to the majors, but when the time came for guitarist/singer/songwriter J Mascis to retire the band's name, he slyly turned the words of his idol Neil Young upside down, choosing to fade away rather than burn out. After 1997's Hand It Over, Mascis ran out the clock, bringing his contract with Sire/Reprise to a close, doing some solo acoustic tours before forming the Fog and cutting a couple records with them without making any real impact outside of his devoted fans. And since he didn't break beyond his cult, Dinosaur Jr. seemed to belong solely to the history books -- the band that bridged the gap between the Replacements and Nirvana, the band that was seminal but not widely popular, a band that for whatever reason wasn't passed down to younger brothers and sisters the way their Boston compatriots the Pixies were. Perhaps it was because, unlike the Pixies, they summed up their times too well, since there was no other alt-rock musician that was as quintessentially slacker as J Mascis. With his laconic drawl and anthems of ambivalence, he was a figurehead for a generation who chose to stay on the sidelines, so sliding away from the spotlight was a logical path for Mascis: he never seemed to really want the fame, so it seemed that he'd be happier on the fringe, which is where he wound up. All of this made the reunion of the classic J-Lou-Murph lineup in 2005 all the more surprising: there may have been unfinished business, but such a mess seemed inherent to their mystique. But the group got together to tour in support of reissues of their first three albums, and defying all logic, the reunion worked -- working so well that the band decided to record a full-length album, Beyond, releasing it in May 2007. The very existence of this new album is a surprise, but the real shock is that Beyond is a flat-out great record, a startling return to form for J Mascis as a guitarist and songwriter and Dinosaur Jr. as a band. Although this is from the lineup responsible for You're Living All Over Me and Bug, two records so drenched in noise they still sound like aural assaults decades after their original release, Beyond sonically resembles latter-day Dinosaur albums; it's not as harsh and it's stylistically varied, ranging from full-throttle rockers to skipping country-rock and elegiac ballads. In a way, this sounds like the album that could have been released instead of Green Mind if Lou had stuck around, or if Dinosaur made the kind of grand major-label debut many expected them to deliver in the days before Nevermind. Musically, this suits that description -- Beyond is not a breakthrough or reinvention, it's a consolidation of their strengths, which means it sounds very much like the band did at its peak -- but in terms of attitude, Mascis could never have made an album as assured as this in 1992, simply because he never was this confident. Naturally, this deliberate disengagement was a large part of Dinosaur Jr.'s appeal: it not only made them sound distinct from their predecessors, but Mascis' ambivalence about anything and everything made his guitar virtuosity and great songs seemed almost accidental, their very casualness proof of his genius. Beyond is very different in that for the first time, Mascis is assertive about his talent. He sounds engaged -- in music, in life (as he winkingly acknowledges on the chorus of the opening "Almost Ready," "C'mon life/I'm almost ready") -- and it gives the album a powerful sense of purpose that the classic Dinosaur albums were lacking by their very design. But Beyond isn't great simply because it's cohesive; it's great because it's as bold, vital, and monstrous as their best early work. As soon as the album crashes open with "Almost Ready," it's clear that Dinosaur Jr. has tapped into the essence of their music, and their thundering roar sounds as vivid and thrilling as it was the first time around. After that visceral shock fades, it soon becomes apparent that Mascis' writing is as forceful and surprisingly melodic as his guitar playing, and it soon becomes apparent that he's no longer burying his heart or humor beneath his band's walls of sounds; they're proudly out on display. This fact is brought into sharp relief by Lou Barlow's songs, two tunes that are typically turned inward, yet they're enlivened by being delivered by this remarkable band, which gives Lou's songs a backbone they never quite had in Sebadoh. Plus, the very presence of Barlow's songs helps emphasize that Beyond is a full-fledged reunion, the sound of a group making amends and reconnecting with their strengths. Lou left the band because J didn't let his songs on Dinosaur's records, but now that they're back together, it's a fully collaborative effort, and the band is stronger for it, as this unexpectedly glorious reunion proves. Beyond isn't merely a worthy album from a reunited band, it's simply a great record by any standard.

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