Dinosaur Jr - Farm

Two years on from the reunion album ‘Beyond’ and Dinosaur Jr. are no longer doing the collective sigh of “Phew, we still got it!”, but rather are forging ahead, business as usual and progression is on the cards.

There are of course some straightforward elements that remain unchanged – such as the drive-along guitar and bass of ‘Your Weather’, its vocals submerged in the trad-rock fray. Safe to say the trio haven’t had some kind of Madonna reinvention of themselves, J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph are simply back to a less retrospective-focussed form.

Melodies as evocative as ‘Over It’s repeat fret bending are easy to fall into, particularly as they open up to let Mascis’s vocal shine through in a less biting Dave Grohl fashion (all the better for its lack of faux-rage). The drummer is also working particularly hard on this effort, machine-gunning in the breaks, filling all the gaps and then reintroducing the tempo.

Baring their softer side, ‘Said the People’ is a neat, slow-burning, smoochy number with an almost organ-lite backing and some weeping guitar, which drags the track over the 7-minutes marker but doesn’t lose sight of its purpose; essentially elaborating on the mood, which Mascis achieves artfully. The same six-string craft opens up ‘See You’ and is fortunately one of the more distinguishable events, where sometimes their intricacies are difficult to appreciate with the minimal texture changes their set-up suffers.

‘I Don’t Wanna Go There’ adds some beef to their dynamics, Mascis’ vocals in particular coming to the fore, less resistant than elsewhere. The wah-wah is also in high demand for expanding the chunkiness of the guitar to match that of the bass, and one that performs repeatedly for Dinosaur Jr. Never afraid to stretch themselves, the musicianship on display far exceeds the ‘meat and potatoes’ approach that elder-rock can often involve.

As improbable as their reunion was (a good 23 years after forming originally), it is remarkable to be listening to a body of work that fails to succumb to the ‘in it for the money’ mentality that the word reunion often signifies. With ‘Farm’ feeling as though they are future thinking, let’s hope this marks the additional chapter of a lengthy read.