Dinosaur Jr.

by Howard Wyman • June 29, 2009

Dinosaur Jr.
Farm
(Jagjaguwar, 2009)

Guitar eaters: Dinner is served. This is one unrelenting smorgasbord of electric leads, rhythms, and solos, distortion-battered and dunked in the oil by a slack-voiced modern master with a little help from his friends. Early on, scorned/rejoined bassist Lou Barlow was touting this reunited outfit's semi-sophomore effort (that is, the second since the original trio reunited—it's the fifth album consisting of this particular lineup, and if we count the handful of fully Mascis-dominated LPs from group's post-Barlow '90s, Farm is the ninth album overall released under the Dinosaur Jr. name) as a big step up from the last one. "Right away I knew it was superior to Beyond," Barlow told Spin back in March, because "it has an urgency." Indeed, the band does sound like they're crankin' it out in a hurry, and it's a pretty barebones arrangement—guitar, bass, guitar, drums, and guitar, although there's only one guitarist, and if his dominance in the mix doesn't make it obvious enough, it's worth noting that J. Mascis is also the producer and central songwriter. Barlow does contribute two originals of his own, so it's not entirely a one-man show, and the shifts in style between Mascis and Barlow are among the bigger differentiations on an otherwise very constant batch of rock. When the constant happens to be Dinosaur Jr., it's tempting not to complain; however, when the album comes described as sounding "like the first three," that's not only a bit of a stretch, but it opens up a world of comparisons that obviously won't work out in favor of the new stuff.

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