Dinosaur Jr. 4-30-09

Posted by: – May 08, 2009

Dinosaur Jr. inspire a lot of conflicting emotions in me. On the one hand, You’re Living All Over Me, Bug, and Green Mind are nigh classic records and contain some of the most fiery guitar work of the era courtesy of J Mascis. After roughly a decade of line-up changes and solo projects, the original trio of J, Lou, and Murph, reunited a few years ago for the then vogue practice of alt-rock reunions.

Recently the band reared its head at The National for a packed night in support of their new album, Farm, which is due out in June on Fat Possum. After Mike Watt graced the stage with his seemingly unshakable presence, the three members of Dinosaur Jr, appeared onstage one by one with all the excitement of a sponge. That’s always the thing that catches me with Dinosaur Jr. They never look like they really give a shit about being onstage, but the moment the opening chords to “Tarpit” begin to fill the room, all bets are off. It’s perfectly understandable to not be entirely thrilled with what Dinosaur Jr. do, but it’s hard to argue that no one else can match their of pop-sludge. The rest of the night found the band grinding out classic after classic, with solos to spare and an audience that, at one point, broke out into a full-on pit during “Freak Scene.” The only song unveiled from their forthcoming album was the epic jam “I Don’t Want to Go There” which found J actually moving joints in his body outside of his hands.

Truthfully, the best part of the show for me was seeing the hundreds of nostalgic thirty-somethings seamlessly mixed with teenagers who were experiencing the band from an entirely different angle. It’s a pretty satisfying sight to see the generation gap bridged so well with a wall of amplifiers and fuzzboxes.

Check out some footage of Dinosaur Jr playing the song "Freak Scene" on the European tour in 1991 with Sonic Youth and Nirvana: