Dinosaur Jr Are Back And Just 'Polishing The Same Stone'

The ongoing three-decades-plus saga that is the career of alternative-rock legends Dinosaur Jr continued with a vengeance in 2016 with the release of their 11th studio album, Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not, a strong continuation of the impeccable form that the band's original line-up has been displaying since reforming back in 2005.

And while it's an odd event for any reformation to bear such palatable fruit, it's even more remarkable in the case of Dinosaur Jr given that the band's original incarnation — J Mascis (guitar/vocals), Lou Barlow (bass) and Emmett "Murph" Murphy (drums) — dissolved in unparalleled acrimony in 1989 following their third album, Bug (1988). The tension between Mascis and Barlow had grown so untenable that the latter was fired. Barlow formed his own outfit Sebadoh, with Mascis continuing Dinosaur Jr through the '90s with various line-ups and releasing four more albums before knocking the band on the head in 1997 and embarking on his own solo career.

When the original three protagonists then reunited in 2005 to tour the reissue of their early catalogue, few people expected it turn into a full-blown revival yet that's exactly what has transpired in the intervening years. The trio quickly graduated from peddling mere nostalgia and started recording new music, and this renaissance has now spawned four exquisitely strong records, with many rating Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not the strongest collection so far.

"The good tunes usually come out of the last desperate gasps of a record, like, 'We need a couple more songs!'"

When The Music catches up with Barlow, the band have just completed stints touring the new material through the States and Europe and he seems delighted with how the songs have crossed over into the live realm.

"It's been going over really well — at least for us," he offers. "You're never sure how people feel about it but at least for us it's been really good. We could probably play most of the record if we wanted to, but at the moment we're playing about half of it which is more than we usually do with new records. It's a really natural record — a natural born Dinosaur Jr record."

Barlow admits to being really happy with how Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not panned out, especially given that the cupboard was almost bare leading into the sessions.

"I am pleased, yeah. I guess going into it we didn't really have a lot of material so there was a little bit of anxiety surrounding that. Like, J was like [shrugs], 'I don't know what I'm going to do.' I don't know whether he was tormenting Murph on purpose, but Murph was like, 'Well what are you going to do? Have you got some songs?' And he was, like, 'I don't have anything! I dunno'.

"And I think, for me, I was kinda excited because I always think that with any of these reunion records by the time we get to the end we should be run out [of ideas], and with J that's when the mojo really starts to happen," he laughs. "The good tunes usually come out of the last desperate gasps of a record, like, 'We need a couple more songs!' And he's like, 'Okay'. And this one almost started there, like, 'The pressure's on and we've got to come up with some stuff!' And I sort of feel that it's almost like the most natural songs come from that sort of pressure, and this record the whole thing almost seemed to emerge that way."

While Mascis is Dinosaur Jr's primary songwriter, most albums contain at least one Barlow composition and, on the new album, his two offerings — Love Is... and Left/Right — have proved some of the strongest of the batch. The former song was originally auditioned for Barlow's recent solo album Brace The Wave, a stripped-back collection using mainly voice and ukulele, before eventually finding its much-louder home.

"I've had this riff that I did on a four-string guitar, it was just this kinda demo riff that I had around for ages and ages..."

"I tried it for Brace The Wave, yeah," he tells. "I kind of strung all the parts together around that time and tried it acoustically, and I was, like, 'No, it's not happening'. I kinda ran through it once and listened to the playback and went, 'Okay, fuck that one!' Then when it came time for the Dino record I did a demo with a friend playing drums and I'm like, 'Okay, this sounds more like it'. Then I just brought it to Murph and Murph picked it up real quick, and it was one of those songs where I could really hear a solo in it and I'm not... J's the consummate solo guy.

"I guess there were just too many parts in the song [to work in solo form]. I think maybe it just needed to be blown out, and I just wasn't aware of that until I tried to record it, and then I was like, 'Oh, okay, it needs more'.

And the crux of Left/Right had been around for decades before flowering into life this year.

"The basic riff of that song — I can't even tell you how old it is: I might have come up with it in, like, 1990?" Barlow ponders. "I'm not even joking. I've had this riff that I did on a four-string guitar, it was just this kinda demo riff that I had around for ages and ages, and it was one of those things where I never followed up on it but it never went away. I would just think about it, like, 'What about that riff?' and it just kept popping up in my mind over and over and over again.

"And then for this record we were working on it and I went, 'God, that fucking riff! Maybe I should just bring this out and get rid of it, it's been haunting me for ages!' And I think maybe just lyrically there were maybe things in my life that meant that I finally had some lyrical thrust behind it that kind of matched what I felt was the emotion of the riff itself, so I did a little bit of work to blow it out into a real song.

"And it also fit into the idea of a song where I play guitar and J plays bass, that was my other idea behind it — so J doesn't actually play guitar on that tune, but I knew he'd be psyched. I knew that he'd do it. I just knew that he'd be into it. I think I've learned enough over this reunion thing that he's totally game — he's open-minded and he's pretty flexible, and I knew that he'd be up for it. And I like the way that he plays bass, too, so I was like, 'Hey J, want to play bass on this?' And he was like, 'Yeah, sure. Great.'"

Barlow admits that this was also a roundabout way of addressing the infamous lack of communication within the Dinosaur Jr ranks, with recent reports suggesting that even this far into the second career phase Mascis and Barlow still rarely speak to one another.

"I think, for me, I guess I wanted to get more of a glimpse into what he thought of, bass-wise, which would give me more information for when I needed to address his songs, like, where I would go. Because it's hard, I can't really ask him direct musical questions," Barlow laughs. "I have to do a lot of sort of outside things and experiment, and then infer what he would want. It's hard, I think he has a lot of really strong opinions about things but he just doesn't respond well to direct questions. But that's cool, that's fine, I can work around that."

The second phase of Dinosaur Jr has been remarkable for both quantity and quality — they've now released more albums than they issued during the first stint together — a fact especially notable given that most bands who reform struggle to capture that original spark (if they even bother). Does Barlow attribute this to the band's natural musical chemistry?

"I guess so. We don't really alter anything, it's not really different to what we were when we began. I think we're kind of impervious to trends, and that's good. I think that at some point if you keep doing the same thing over and over again people stop giving you shit for doing the same thing, and go, 'Thank god! Thank god they're doing the same thing!'" he chuckles. "You become something that people rely on, I suppose; people become less critical. If you're a young band, people want you to change with the times and move forward; there's always this idea of progress, but if you just kinda stick it out the pressure kinda disappears after a while and I think in our case that fits really well.

"We're just kinda polishing the same stone, and I like that because I know there's bands that have done a similar thing — the Ramones, let's say — that have a basic sound but they just slightly reinterpret it through dozens of records, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm really happy to be part of a band that can actually get away with that, you know."

It's posited that each of the four records in this second stage has definitely possessed its own tone or vibe, though, albeit each firmly staying within Dinosaur Jr's long-established sonic template.

"No, that's true," Barlow concedes. "I chalk that up to J, he does really think a lot about the textures that he pursues as a guitarist and that's really where the real stories of the records are: it's essentially what he's thinking about guitar-wise, and what he's experimenting with just as far as the tones and the shifts and things. With this record, it's a little bit more of a naturalistic approach. With the other ones — Farm [2009] and Beyond [2007] especially — those are really kind of amazing guitar constructions, but this one is a little more stripped-back for him. And for that reason it sounds different to the other ones, it's cool."

What about the bigger picture of the Dinosaur Jr catalogue: does Barlow ever pay heed to '90s records recorded while he was still in purgatory?

"I don't really know them that well," he smiles. "I dunno. I like it when I play those songs, and if J was to tell me, 'I want to play a certain song,' and told me the name of some song I don't know from a '90s record I'd be psyched, I'd be, 'Okay!' and I'd go and I'd find the song. I think with his songwriting, at the very least musically; I always find it really interesting. I like climbing into his stuff, and I like to try and figure it out. Maybe that '90s stuff is a little rock for me, I guess, but I like the challenge to go in there and dumb it down - that's exciting to me. "

Barlow has long been a regular visitor to Australia — either with Dino Jr, Sebadoh or following his solo muse — and is looking forward to returning once more with the new album in tow.

"Yeah, it's cool because I come down there nearly every year now," he enthuses. "That's pretty cool and that's all I can really say. I always feel pretty fortunate that I'm able to do that, especially now that I've moved back to the east coast of the United States where it's really cold. I lived in California for such a long time that it's nice to go back to escape the seasons."

Has he been enjoying living in his native Massachusetts again after a long stint in the west?

"Yeah, in a personal way, yeah," he says. "It's close to my family and close to Murph and J, which for me really helped the flow of the new record. I really felt more relaxed because I was close by and I wasn't really under any strict timeline, because when I lived in Los Angeles I had to fly back, and it's a six-hour flight, so I'd have to come back here and I'd have a certain period of time that I had to do anything in and then I'd have to fly back home. But, being here, those guys are literally half an hour away so I could drop the kids off at school and then drive out to J's house — that's all I've got to do. For me that made it a much more relaxed process. So definitely being around my family and also being close to the band has definitely been really nice."

And, finally, with recent solo and Dinosaur Jr releases under his belt, is there any sign of movement in the Sebadoh camp at all?

"Not yet, no," he admits. "I think [Sebadoh bandmate] Jason Loewenstein has a solo record that he's completed, and he's sort of negotiating on the release of that record right now. I'm kind of just looking forward to seeing what he does with that right now, I just want to let him do his own thing for a little while and then hopefully reconvene at some point. But no real plans right now."