Dinosaur Jr.- Album Review

By Michael Momper


Throughout a tenure of over 30 years, guitar wizard J. Mascis’ band Dinosaur Jr. has proven with every single album that they are the type of band you can always count on to deliver a solid and instrumentally superb effort.  This most recent phase of their career has included a plethora of emotionally and sonically resonant tracks, and – perhaps most impressive – J. Mascis and Lou Barlow’s voices sound as warm and fine-tuned as ever.

 At times melancholy and others blissful, Dino’s songs are always full of crunchy and fuzzy walls of electric guitar- but they always manage to be incredibly loud without being abrasively so.  Their past three albums are very listenable, introspective, and warm; their most recent album, titled Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not and released late in 2016, is no exception.

Dino Jr. is a band that has managed to retain a cult following since the 1980s and evolve in a very assured way that has managed not to alienate their closely held fans.  Their music sounds slightly more polished now, and perhaps less chaotic as a whole, but will still fuel the fires of the skateboarders and avid dream-punk fans that so dearly loved the band from the beginning.  Interestingly, Dino Jr. has seemed to experience a second life late in the 2000s, recently churning out some of their best work and my personal favorite guitar moments from J. Mascis (check out Dino’s song “I Don’t Wanna Go There”, which ends with an insane and beautiful 4-minute guitar solo).

So, luckily for fans, Give a Glimpse definitely follows this same trajectory.  The lyrics for the most part are dreamy and careless, and the guitar is towering and fun.  My personal favorite new song, “Knocked Around”, perfectly captures their ability to deftly balance the loud and the soft.  There are great guitar solos throughout the album; however, they are not quite as powerful as Mascis’ work on their last two albums.  As a whole, however, the album is immensely listenable and extremely fun for traveling.  It moves briskly, and offers enough variety to give listeners a pleasurable experience even on a full listen.  The guitar work is intricate and layered, but never overly complicated- it is just a fun and carefree album!  Though it was released last autumn, I think this is a great album for the windows-down and heat-filled days of summer.  If you have never given Dino Jr. a listen, this could be a fine first listen- especially if you love your guitars loud, your tunes cheery, and your dinosaurs, uh, junior.

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