Dinosaur Jr. Makes Ears Bleed Again with Near There

 

More than four decades later, Dinosaur Jr., with their original lineup, are still making the kind of noise that makes your ears bleed. J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph are back with a new album after five years.

Decades ago, I showed up at school with a cassette of the band and put it on for my friends who adored The Cure. Their jaws hit the floor when the trio’s version of Just Like Heaven came on. It was better than the original. Sorry, Robert. Forty years later, the band still doesn’t have a bad album in their discography, and now they’re adding Near There.

Near There sounds like the 80s, with J and company back in the same basement where they started, only the band is wiser now. They’re living their second life, something few bands have managed. They may no longer be the most underground thing around, but they were never Nirvana, the Pixies, or Sonic Youth. Maybe they were closest to Hüsker Dü, but Mould and Hart’s band didn’t even make it into the 90s.

J, Lou, and Murph suspended activities for a few years but returned in 2005 better than ever and with the volume cranked to the max. Now it seems they’re not going to stop. Near There really puts us near there, near the mid 80s, when it all began for the band. Mascis even tracked down gear identical to what he bought in the 70s and used in the 80s.

For Mascis it was a creative mandate to return to the sound of the first album. The big difference is that now Mascis knows how he wants to sound. In 1985 he had no idea what he was doing, and that makes a huge difference.

The members of the band are now in their sixties. They’re still playing in the same old basement. They’re still listening to Black Sabbath, the Stooges, Neil Young, hardcore punk, and the Meat Puppets. Mascis’s vocals sound the same as they did in the 80s, competing with Michael Stipe for the most indecipherable delivery. The production rolls back four decades to the band’s first record.

Several Got Away is a glorious opener with guitars that are a pure joy to hear again. No Friends is a little more relaxed but just as noise rock. Everything at Once has a pop streak. It’s on Take Me With You that the mix of hardcore punk and classic rock that made the band so memorable really stands out.

Blowin Up, Clam Along, and Walk Me Back are a bit Neil Young crossed with 70s Black Sabbath. Gone Off is that underground 80s sound that threatened to storm the surface in the 90s. Read the Room is the kind of music that would make the Meat Puppets happy, with that blend of punk and classic rock.

No One’s Ready is an extraordinary way to close an extraordinary album. A band with more than 40 years that hasn’t wasted a single minute in the studio making anything less than the best music outside the mainstream, and that can claim they invented the 90s, from Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, and My Bloody Valentine to Blur and Pavement. Near There isn’t a trip to the past just for nostalgia. It’s a trip to the past to reclaim the essence, and to take flight again with even more force.