Dinosaur Jr. brings sonic assault

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Jeff Napier

Dinosaur Jr. band members

Dinosaur Jr.
The Vogue
Tuesday, April 11
Tickets: 317-239-5151

Not many bands in the recent history of rock can boast the kind of mythology and mystique that Dinosaur Jr. can. Three brothers in arms from the wilds of suburban New England, J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph came together and wielded their instruments like weapons, each fighting against the others. Yet, they managed to carve beautiful music from the slab of chaos and feedback that they created. For four years and three albums this trio kept improving.

Songs like “Repulsion,” “Kracked,” “In a Jar” and the apex of Dinosaur Jr. mach 1, “Freak Scene,” displayed Mascis’ incredibly distorted guitar noise threatening to overwhelm everything in its path. And Barlow and Murph giving it everything they got to stay on a steady footing. It was the sound of a band barely holding it together. It was a brilliant combo that was too volatile to last, like white trash and gasoline.

But now in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, these three titans have come back together and, for the past year, have picked up where they left it all those years ago.

Speaking to me from somewhere out West, Lou Barlow seemed happy and genuinely content with the reemergence of his old band. He confessed that they originally got back together for The Money, but now is in the studio working on a new album for which they already have 10 songs recorded. Here’s some of what he had to say.

On his role within the band and the prospect of performing later material written after he’d been booted from the band:

“I’m basically the bass player in Dinosaur Jr. I’ve been hired to play bass, so if J wanted to play, like ‘Feel The Pain’ or something, I’d learn how to play it for him, because that’s my job. The longer we play together, the more that I think that it’s a good idea to play some of the later songs anyway.”

On playing with Mascis and Murph:

“I really have to milk every note I can get out of that bass, I do whatever I need to do to try and be heard. I play a lot of higher notes and I strum the bass a lot, which is something I don’t feel as compelled to do on my own stuff because I’m not fighting for space as much.”

Dispelling the myth that the band fought a lot:

“We never really fought, there was never a fight, we were just so extremely repressed that we never talked about shit. We just didn’t want to do anything, we weren’t fighters, we just didn’t do anything, we just didn’t communicate.”

On alien worship:

“I’m a real part of the band, but I’m not J. I mean, J is the attraction, he’s the alien up there throwing that fire off the stage every night, and he’s the one who wrote those songs, so I don’t feel intimidated by people who worship J or those songs, I’m just there to support him and that’s easy for me.”

What it was like getting back together after almost 20 years:

“I noticed that J seemed to be a lot happier then I remembered him being, so that made things easier (laughing).”