Dinosaur Jr. reissuing all four of their nineties-era albums: Green Mind, Where You Been, Without a Sound, and Hand It Over. The London-based indie label Cherry Red is handling the new editions, which include extra B-sides and other previously unreleased material.
In their first five years as a band, Dinosaur Jr. made three records that revolutionized underground guitar music and then promptly imploded. The original lineup of three scrappy Amherst punks had a nearly magical chemistry that always teetered on being derailed by simmering tensions between controlling guitarist/vocalist/principal songwriter J Mascis and bassist Lou Barlow. In 1989, Mascis acrimoniously fired Barlow and pushed forward with his own vision for the band.
Fourth album Green Mind would be not only the first Dinosaur Jr. record without Barlow’s countermelodic bass lines and neurotic songwriting contributions, it would also be their first major-label effort. Released on Sire subsidiary Blanco y Negro in early 1991, Green Mind was more a Mascis solo album than the work of a proper band, with original Dinosaur drummer Murph only playing on three songs and Mascis handling almost all of the instruments. Even so, the overall sound of the album only changes negligibly from the SST classic Bug that preceded it by just 16 months. Buzzy album opener “The Wagon” (with assistance from Gumball’s Don Flemming and Jay Spiegel) acts as a milder postlude to Bug’s ragged “Freak Scene,” and romps like “How’d You Pin That One on Me?” and “I Live for That Look” only slightly dial back the noisy punk din that could sometimes swallow entire songs on the first three albums.
Where the chaos and confusion of the band’s early days was fueled by youthful anger and frustration, Green Mind found Mascis alone in a room arguing with himself. This becomes more apparent on the album’s second half, where the tone mellows greatly on the melancholic and lamenting “Water,” the stoned bumble of “Muck,” and album highlight “Thumb,” a blissed-out ballad heavy on Mellotron flute samples and Mascis’ searching guitar soloing. The album ushered in the version of Dinosaur Jr. that would live out the rest of the ’90s, with Mascis’ lyrical language of slang and vaguities hemming him into a lonely stoner figure and the warm-but-distant tone of the songwriting exposing an enormous debt to Neil Young for the first time in the band’s catalog. While he would work with other musicians more collaboratively on successive recordings, Mascis stayed at the center of every decision for the band’s major-label run. Green Mind would be the most restless and insular of the four albums, born out of Mascis’ band deteriorating under its own weight, leaving him to ramble and shred as his own devices saw fit. At the time of its release, many thought it lacked the power of the original trio, but it’s a unique chapter in the band’s discography, with some of the best-written songs Mascis would manage. Aptly named, Green Mind finds Mascis shrugging and mumbling as he walks listeners through a guided tour of his stoned, drifting thoughts. [This reissue packages the original ten-song album with B-sides, alternate mixes, previously unreleased live material, and the songs that made up the Whatever’s Cool with Me EP, released shortly after the album.]
***
By the time Where You Been surfaced, Seattle had completely exploded, and given that Dinosaur Jr.’s sound, attitude, and more were as proto-slacker as could be, the temptation must have been great to cash in. But J Mascis stuck to his guns, and there’s little about Where You Been that would have seemed out of place on Green Mind or even some earlier records. Recorded with a full band throughout, Mike Johnson and Murph lay down does-the-job rhythm tracks while Mascis tackles almost everything else. Where You Been is occasionally moody and dark but otherwise is more rough fun. Opening track “Out There” is one of the most mournful things Mascis has recorded, with an especially yearning chorus, but his fiery solo still makes it classic Dinosaur Jr. “Start Choppin” immediately follows, its quick, catchy lead riff helping to make it as close to a radio hit as the band ever had — and, of course, a big ol’ solo or two adding to the fun of it all. From there on in it’s a puréed blast of punk, classic rock, and more. It may be business as usual, but it’s good business just the same, whether it’s the gentle “Not the Same,” on which Mascis does his best Neil Young impersonation, or the stuttering feedback snorts and rips on “Hide,” on which he borrows a bit back from disciple Kevin Shields. Other highlights include “Get Me,” a melancholic, steady cruncher with another trademark solo of the gods, and the unjustly ignored “What Else Is New,” which sounds like a mid-’70s rock ballad with louder volume and none of the crud, right down to the concluding string section.
***
J Mascis fired longtime drummer Murph before the recording of Without a Sound, which came as a surprise to Murph. Naturally, the change in personnel hasn’t changed Dinosaur Jr.’s sound much; the only difference between Without a Sound and Where You Been is a more pronounced country leaning (particularly on the album’s high point, the rollicking “I Don’t Think So”) and shorter, more concise performances. What hasn’t changed are the overpowering fuzz tones of Mascis’ guitar, which tend to hide his more expressive vocals; it also makes digging out the gems on this album a little more difficult than necessary.
***
By the late ’90s, J Mascis had been through the wringer and back with his band Dinosaur Jr., suffering through over a decade of acrimonious lineup shifts, transitioning from hand-to-mouth indie labels to the majors, and generally riding the waves of the mainstream commodification of alternative rock that defined much of the decade for many fringe-dwelling rock bands. Seventh album Hand It Over followed a three-year break after 1994’s Without a Sound, a restrained and inconsistent album that nevertheless gave the band their biggest commercial success. Without a Sound also happened after the departure of longtime drummer Murph, leaving Mascis to track all the drum parts himself and return Dinosaur Jr. to the virtual solo-project status it held for their 1991 major-label debut, Green Mind. The live chemistry of the original lineup would make their material after a 2007 reunion some of their most unexpectedly strong, but from the catalog that came about from Mascis’ control-freak tendencies meeting major-label excess, Hand It Over is simultaneously the exhausted last gasp of a fading project and a largely overlooked gem. My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields co-produced the album, and his experimental attitude towards guitar tone and sonic atmospheres can be heard in the spectrum of fuzz that colors Mascis’ solos and walls of riffage alike. The lazy drifting tempos, Mellotron flutes, and layers of distorted and acoustic guitars on “I Don’t Think” all bring to mind the softer side of MBV’s style (not to mention guest vocals from Belinda Butcher on the song’s chorus). While the songwriting, lyrics, and soloing are all signature Mascis, there’s a dreaminess that was absent from the records leading up to it. This dreamy haze compliments Mascis’ eternal-slacker songwriting energy on the yearning “Can’t We Move This” and the ambling “Loaded.” In addition to the shoegaze undercurrents, the flirtations with extended instrumentation that began with symphonic touches on 1993’s Where You Been reach full strength here. This can be as subtle as the stabbing strings on “Can’t We Move This” or as blatant as the piccolo trumpet that takes center stage in “I’m Insane.” Mascis never loses touch with his guitar-wizard roots, offering up eight-minute album centerpiece “Alone” as Hand It Over’s testament to shadowy, Neil Young & Crazy Horse-modeled melancholy. Upon initial release, the record was all but buried by a complete lack of promotion, and it would be ten years before the Dinosaur namesake was reactivated with a reunion of the classic lineup. Despite poor sales, Hand It Over was a hidden highlight, with more good songs, gnarly shredding, and wildly ambitious ideas than most other chapters of Dinosaur Jr.’s ever-weird major-label period.