Seeing Flavio's tendency to review only very recent releases, I wondered if I would be able to overcome my fascination for the sixties/seventies and present an album that wasn't from those decades (or too obviously inspired by them) but that I still felt strongly enough about.
The best I could find was Dinosaur Jr.'s Beyond.
2007 was an interesting year for music. Take one of the most questionable things to do for a band (i.e. reforming after more than a decade), and apply it to the following: The Stooges and Dinosaur Jr (ironically enough, J Mascis - Dino's guitar/singer - is responsible for both those reunions). The former helped define rock music, both as a way of life and as an artistic product, while the latter helped it go through/recover from the very painful eighties. Were they still going to have something interesting to record after respectively 34 and 19 years of abscence?
Oh yes. In fact, I like The Weirdness (Stooges') and Beyond better than both bands' original work. Picking your favorite is a personal matter - mine happens to be this one...
Dinosaur Jr.
Beyond
2007, Fat Possum Records
... and this image shows the first reason: by putting a guy sinking/being eaten by a couch on the cover, I knew these people, whoever they are, were going somewhere interesting.
To many (too many) J is the slacker. A living definition of that word - Allmusic & Pitchfork for once agree on the adjective with quintessential. I can't deny I thought that was a good thing, a first step towards having something in common with that guy. Because his guitar work literally melted my brains out, and their songwriting was a perfect mix of melody and agressivity. Not the classical Nirvana mellow-loud dynamics, but a slightly more contemplative philosophy that suggests there still is a chance.
Just like the monotonous Massachusetts winter will end at some point, something good is bound to happen. At some point. If you wait long enough.
The opening song, Almost Ready possesses this incredible (I'm weighting my words carefully here) drive, drenched in fuzz and muscular guitars. A fluid, so good it's almost painful solo is followed by drooling lyrics, courtesy of Massachusetts' own guitar hero, the so-lazy-he-nicknamed-himself-with-one-letter J. Go back and forth between the fuzziness and witty/emotional verbal nonchalance, and end with a mash-up of unrelated sounds. The other pieces have a healthy variation of rhythm, texture and lenght, making the album coherent but not repetitive, surprising but not (too) overwhelming. Like a good surprise in a familiar place.
Live, his face is most of the time obscured by an impressive silver hair. Like a cool Gandalf (Ents on their last album's cover!) who went to college in 80's Massachusetts, studied whatever required the biggest amount of bullshit (and was succesful at it) then went for a sparkly purple Jazzmaster rather than a wand, like a badass Dumbledore, the man mysteriously nicknamed the electric veal by Rock n Folk pushes the limits of what used to be called alternative music towards a (mostly) mind-bending blissed apocalypse of loud guitars.
A common criticism, and one of the reasons that tore the band appart in the 80's, is that sadly enough J's guitar proficiency supposedly involves some sort of megalomania, which isn't helped by the fact that he writes and sings most of the songs. To hell with that: when you make an album as good as this one, it was worth going through 19 years of separation, at least for your audience. And even if J is a very important member of Dinosaur Jr., Lou (bass) and Murph (drums) do a very impressive job. It's not easy being the two dudes playing with the 3 (or 4? 5? !!) Marshall stacks man. Where J is a monster of power and inventivity, Lou & Murph, also sporting monosyllabic names, provide a more than necessary backbeat, a driving rhythm for J to roam freely and produce what seems to be some of the most daring solos in modern rock music. Consider Neu's Hallogallo, turn the mood knob from relaxed to eternal disappointment, go from the German Autobahn to the Northeastern winter forest road on a sunny cold day, and abandon some machine-esque efficacity for some overwhelming emotion expresed through soaring guitars rather than smooth filtered layers of waves, and you might get an idea of what Beyond sounds like (where rhythm is underlying but still essential). Ironically enough, there still is so much beyond that.
One could wonder what brought those three back together. Here's my hypothesis: J wondered how he would make his day useful, and found Lou's phone number on an old piece of parchment that had been delivered by a trained hawk. The following ensued:
Hypothetical Phone Call between J and Lou:
2005 or something.
"So... Lou... erm.... yeah listen I was wondering if you wanted to play with Murph. I just got a new Marshall stack and I think it would sound good for Dino songs.
- Yeah? erm... let me think
(4 minute silence during which Lou makes eating lucky charms sounds)
wait what?
- I want to jam with you and Murph again.
- Ha! finally got you to admit it!
- You're such a kid.
- Probably. We'll figure something out next time we run into each other at Whole Foods. Hey, if Thurston's there with us again maybe we can have coffee. Maybe even lunch at Atkins. Our kids can make a music video for the next Sonic Youth single.
-Sounds good Lou. See you tomorrow."
This probably isn't what happened. But honestly, I don't really care. Nevermind reality, these guys came up with my favorite album of the 2000's. One that packs a punch, but satisfies a need for reassurance that there is optimism in this world, even if it's quite inactive. One with a good opener, a good ending, and a good everything-in-between. Hopefully all of this was enough to convince you to try it. I hope you like it as much as I did.
If the best I could find was the Dinosaur Jr. - a band formed in the mid eighties, with influences including early 80's punk but also very largely 60's & 70's references like Young and Sabbath - reunion album, then it's a good thing Flavio contributes to this blog: at least one of us will be on top of his releases. If it's hard to find what you like in the sea of lesser known golden time gems, it seems to be even harder to know what you'll like in the internet-obscured ocean of recent releases. Subtitle: If the web doesn't always have what you need, it always has more than too much of what you don't need.
I'm never using a sentence I brought up during a bar argument again.
By The Way, Here is an Axolotl. Hope it Helps:
JNCT
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