There's always been something about Dinosaur Jr. that had them lumped in with the grunge acts of the early Nineties. Despite coming from Massachusetts, Dinosaur Jr. recorded for Californian label SST right around the time that Sub Pop acts from further up the West Coast were creating a big ruckus in what were then called college rock circles.
And the tunes crafted by J Mascis, Murph, and Lou Barlow had a vibe that seemed to be, if not laid back in a West Coast sense, at least sufficiently unhurried as to be at odds with the harDCore roiling the nation's capital, or the No New York stuff rattling the Big Apple in the late Eighties. By the time that Dinosaur Jr. signed to Warner Brothers, things were ripe for an act like this to break big. And while "Kool Thing" got Sonic Youth some love on MTV, one can't imagine the suits at WB ever seriously imagining that the teens would be pinning posters of Mascis up on their walls. The signing of the band to a major label was one of those grasps at cool the majors made in the wake of the grunge wave (even though Dino were really not grunge), and the first Dinosaur Jr major label album was an even safer bet when Nirvana, signed to Geffen, hit the big time.
Miraculously, Dinosaur Jr. rode out their time at the majors through four albums: Green Mind (1991), Where You Been (1993), Without a Sound (1994), and Hand It Over (1997). And each has been lovingly reissued as of last week by Cherry Red in deluxe two-disc (or LP) sets loaded with virtually everything the band recorded for the majors from 1991 to 1997. This reissue project tackles a band that was never really forgotten or neglected, but one whose output in those years served as an example of the risks that could be bankrolled by big companies on occasion. J Mascis got lucky, and at least he carved out a corner of the alternative music kingdom all for himself.
Green Mind (1991), essentially a J Mascis solo record since he did most of the instruments, occupies an interesting space between the grunge stuff and shoegaze explorations of the era. "Blowing It" and the title cut ensure that Green Mind be judged on its own, and not in comparison to any peers from 1991 because, frankly, Mascis was really doing something special here. And while B-side "Whatever's Cool with Me" sounds enough like bands from Seattle to warrant lumping Dinosaur Jr. in with popular American indie from 1991, a few other numbers here, especially "The Wagon", are bright and crisp enough to place this beyond easy reference points. Buttressed by a slew of live recordings, including an epic "Sludgefeast" and a skewed "Freak Scene", this edition of Green Mind (1991) remains the definitive document of a point in time when American college rock took a huge leap forward by aping the past.
Where You Been (1993) is even better. Now a real band thanks to drummer Murph and bassist Mike Johnson, Dinosaur Jr. had refined their sound in such a way that it could be pointed towards something pop ("Out There") and then angled back to the tastes of the underground ("Not Me"). J Mascis didn't exactly expand the style of Dinosaur Jr on this 1993 album as much as he embraced it. The same sort of sludge-rock bubbles throughout this one, but with a number like Start Choppin'" in his holster, Mascis was more likely to get some attention from modern rock radio. Loaded with Peel Sessions, this two-disc Cherry Red edition of Where You Been succeeds mostly due to the bonus tracks, including absolutely scorching live renditions of "Sludgefeast" and old standby "Budge", here etched in nearly hardcore terms.
In 1994, you couldn't turn on the radio or MTV without hearing "Feel the Pain", the lead track from Without a Sound. Here, J Mascis became a sort of character, a kind of hipster archetype armed with a guitar. Like I said earlier, it makes some weird stylistic sense that this was all lumped in with grunge acts of the era, even if Mascis was from the East Coast, and he wasn't particularly raw in his singing style. No, J's laconic drawl anchored numbers like this and the spry "I Don't Think So" in such a way that it's sort of amazing how popular something this (seemingly) half-assed was. Still, reeling from the death of his father, Mascis revealed a surprising amount of genuine emotion on contemplative stuff here, like "Seemed Like the Thing to Do" and "Over Your Shoulder", the warm album closer. This Cherry Red version of Without A Sound is supplemented by a fairly routine set of instrumental versions of some of the tracks, plus a valuable live set from the Brixton Academy in 1994. Here, "Sludgefeast" makes yet another, longer, appearance, and old nugget "Little Fury Things" is taken out and driven around the block. One of the best live sets in any of these reissues, this second disc of Without a Sound is essential for fans of Dinosaur Jr., particularly in offering illustrations of the band's ability to turn these songs into broader, more expansive things in a live setting.
Hand It Over from 1997 is, supposedly, J Mascis's favorite album of these major studio releases and it remains, at least for me, the least focused of this set. Far enough removed from the first wave of college rock after the rise of Nirvana signed to a major, the tunes here don't seem particularly significant, nor did they in 1997, with Britpop ruling the airwaves on both sides of the Atlantic. "Never Bought It" is fairly melodic and pleasant, but "Alone", at eight minutes, is pure filler. If "Nothing's Goin' On" has a nice hook, it's one that's buried under too much lugubrious noise. The album just seems like a mess still, with the melodies destroyed by bad production, and the other half of the cuts just meandering explorations. Thankfully, lots of the tracks apart from "Alone" are not that long but they seem like it. For all that I don't like about Hand It Over, at least this edition adds the Take A Run At The Sun EP. The title cut there remains one of the best things J Mascis has ever done, its bright pop not entirely at odds with the kind of melody which lurked under the earliest offerings he put forth. The EP makes up a portion of the bonus disc here along with a 1997 concert from Stockholm that sees yet another appearance of "Sludgefeast" and an even longer run at "Alone". Those moments are made up for with a roaring "Freak Scene" and a "Feel the Pain" that sounds like a band still at the top of its game, even as tastes were changing rapidly around the band.
A band I never embraced fully, Dinosaur Jr. were still capable of touching greatness at moments, particularly on the first two of these four reissues. J Mascis had this wonderful knack of sounding like he didn't give a shit and then unleashing a lovely melodic line on his guitar only to douse it with a squall of feedback. Poised somewhere between Neil Young and Kevin Shields, he was for a great portion of that decade one of the real giants of college rock. And while some of what's here doesn't hold up as well as one had hoped it might, lots more feels both of the era and timeless. There was far more heart here in these tunes than I had remembered, and if the younger me was always besotted with Mascis's command of noise, I'm older now and more impressed at how much of himself he poured into these lonely, aching, and sometimes epic noise rock epics.
Green Mind (1991), Where You Been (1993), Without a Sound (1994), and Hand It Over (1997) are all out now on deluxe CD or vinyl editions from Cherry Red.
[Photos: Cherry Red / Dinosaur Jr.]