Home-grown

Farm
Dinosaur Jr
Jagjaguwar, 2009
4 stars

You’d be a fool to expect any major sonic sidesteps from a band this far into their career; thankfully - and respectfully - Dinosaur Jr are not Radiohead or The Beatles. That said, Farm sees the slacker-rock stalwarts doing what they do best and doing it as well as they ever have – melodic, sometimes-melancholic rock, heavy on the fuzz and light on ornamentation (aside from the occasional guitar flourish). The only major surprise is that it’s this good. And long too - with a playing time somewhere around the hour mark it’s like a meditation on late-‘80s garage noise-rock; you might need to kick yourself to remind yourself that you are in fact sitting in an office cubicle or on a city-bound tram, and not on a shitty old couch in a childhood mate’s suburban garage. There are numerous highlights, but none better than the epic I Don’t Wanna Go There, with lead drawler J Mascis doing his best Eddie Vedder impersonation over some fantastic, noisy power-chords and a couple of (for want of a better word) ‘scorching’ guitar solos; it all sounds bloody amazing. Musically, J, Lou and Murph are ageing well – they sound more focused and content than ever. And they should be. Why re-invent the wheel if you’re happy where you’re sitting.

Artwork: C+
This kind of illustration doesn't do much for me personally, but that aside, the text layout of this thing is what really gets me. It just looks a bit rushed; a bit under-cooked.

Published in mX, Thursday July 2, 2009.