I've told you about Dinosaur Jr. before, I know.
When I was younger I spent an entire spring and summer listening to the EP Whatever's Cool With Me. Mowing lawns and helping the contractor I worked for didn't provide a ton of money, so my CD choices were limited to sporadic purchases. I essentially had a queue in my head I was working through, acquiring the big acts at the time and building a back-catalogue of alternative music I loved. At the end of that summer I decided enough was enough, I had to buy that Dinosaur Jr. album with the spooky cover of the hitchhiker. Turns out that despite being a little behind the curve, in regard to buzz and timing, it was a great album that's held up really well. I listened to it quite a bit that fall, on in to winter. I always associate it with the end of summer and the change in seasons. As the world cools and slows down I look for music that's a little more broken and somber, a little more disjointed. This album - Where You Been - is exactly that.
Released in 1993, the album was a big success for Dinosaur Jr., who at that point had never seen that level of mainstream success. It was their first group album, not being recorded solely by the multi-talented J Mascis. Drawing influence from a variety of late-70s sources, the band created a bizarre amalgamation of sound that shows hints of Peter Frampton, some Neil Young esthetics and Cheap Trick guitar heroics. The resulting sound is distinctly their own, totally identifiable as Dinosaur Jr. It's got that loose, jangly sound of raucous grunge with wailing, screaming guitars mashed together with gently picked acoustic bits and broken melodies about failed relationships. The parings, despite of or because of their disparate nature, work quite well together. Together they create a rich, full soundscape that incorporates broader elements like chimes and timpanis. At times it sounds like exemplary grunge and alt rock, other times reaching out into stranger territory. In a word, it's wonderful.
There are a ton of great songs on this album, all in their own weird way. 'Out There' is a rocking, Neil Young-ish number that shifts wildly all over the place with sweeping guitar lines and mournful tones complimented by chimes and bells. 'Start Choppin' is definitive mid-90s alt-rock, all clean guitar licks and mid-tempo quirkiness. 'What Else Is New' is life a major-key inverse to 'Out There', using similar guitar heroics and loose acoustics to make a wide open rocker. 'On The Way' is furious and filled with momentum. 'Not The Same' has an eerie tone to it that I've never really heard anywhere else, by this band or otherwise. My hands-down favorite on the album is the wistful, finger-plucked number 'Goin' Home'. It's a beautiful song that feels so fragile and sad, yet so distinctly Dinosaur Jr. in its construction.
Where You Been is a great under-appreciated album of the 90s. It's not the best album you've never heard, but it is a really solid one by a widely influential band that always flew just a bit under the radar. If you want to get a feel for what kind of gold sits just out of sight from this era instead of the usual over-played tracks, give this album a listen. It's unlike anything else you've heard, I swear.
When I was younger I spent an entire spring and summer listening to the EP Whatever's Cool With Me. Mowing lawns and helping the contractor I worked for didn't provide a ton of money, so my CD choices were limited to sporadic purchases. I essentially had a queue in my head I was working through, acquiring the big acts at the time and building a back-catalogue of alternative music I loved. At the end of that summer I decided enough was enough, I had to buy that Dinosaur Jr. album with the spooky cover of the hitchhiker. Turns out that despite being a little behind the curve, in regard to buzz and timing, it was a great album that's held up really well. I listened to it quite a bit that fall, on in to winter. I always associate it with the end of summer and the change in seasons. As the world cools and slows down I look for music that's a little more broken and somber, a little more disjointed. This album - Where You Been - is exactly that.
