Weirdness Flows: The Songs of Dinosaur Jr (111-120)
120 You Wonder
Sweep It Into Space (2021)
Other than ‘Poledo’ this is the first Lou Barlow song to feature in this list. Like many of his compositions, it’s melancholy, atmospheric and melodically striking. As is often the case with Lou’s songs, J contributes an understated solo, and the restrained drumming is carefully judged. Typically, the lyric is full of portentous imagery: ‘My resistance is an infant in your arms… forget about the holy rollers, there's the heart of God in you.’ There are stronger Lou songs, but as ever, this provides its album with a valuable change of pace and tone.
119 I Know Yer Insane
Hand It Over (1997)
It’s pleasingly perverse to call two songs on the same album ‘I’m Insane’ and ‘I Know Yer Insane’. The latter is driven by a busily intricate little guitar line with occasional bursts of heavy riffing and spacey lead guitar. J’s vocal flits between gentle croon (‘this was overdue’), anguished groan (‘it can’t be this’) and sharp urgency (‘let it out!’)
118 Even You
Without A Sound (1994)
A dark, heavy, swagger that features a brief but wonderfully brutal stuttering, abrasive solo. There’s a touch of ‘rhyming dictionary’ about the lyric in places (‘improve this / lose this’; ‘hate it / overstate it’) but it also contains the marvellous line ‘suffocating bugs surround you’.
117 I Expect It Always
Sweep It Into Space (2021)
High-energy rocker that doesn’t do anything especially complicated but pounds along with admirable gusto.
116 Take It Back
Sweep It Into Space (2021)
An overtly poppy number, with the keyboard line providing a lightness of tone, although this is interspersed with slower, more plaintive passages. A little lightweight overall, perhaps, but you can’t deny the catchiness of the melody. Enjoyably surreal video too:
115 Almost Fare
I Bet On Sky (2012)
Another distinctly jaunty song, this time based around a clipped, insistent riff. In the verse, this little riff is underpinned nicely by a background of distorted but understated strummed chords. The chorus ramps up the distortion, and the contrast between this heavier passage and the sprightly verse works well. Overall, it’s a relatively restrained track, but this helps it sit agreeably between the heavy chug of ‘Watch The Corners’ and the downtempo ‘Stick A Toe In’ on the album. The solo comes in just over a minute from the end (a couple of bars after you might expect it – a nice touch that builds anticipation) and is a delightful flourish.
Lyrically, it’s an exhortation to give a potential relationship a shot. The repeated use of ‘almost’ suggests being on the brink of commitment. There’s an air of hesitancy (‘What should I do? What should I give?) and a sense of fear of lost opportunity (‘She's walking out now…’)
To my mind, the the ‘live in studio’ recording performed in December 2012 for New York station WFUV is more interesting than the album version. Lou Barlow’s bass line is very prominent and almost jazzy in places and Murph’s drumming is more assertive; the solo is longer, more abrasive and is generally played in a lower register than on the LP.
114 Black Betty
I Bet On Sky – Japanese edition bonus track (2012)
‘Black Betty’ is an early 20th century African-American ‘work song’ that was first recorded in 1933 and then by Lead Belly (who is frequently credited with writing it) six years later. However, most people are probably familiar with the song via Ram Jam’s 1977 single.
This somewhat excitable blog review not only rather overstates the merits of the Ram Jam version (a decent slice of party-hard blues-rock, but by no means ‘maybe the greatest rock song ever recorded’) but also makes the dubious assertion that Dinosaur Jr’s cover is ‘even better than you can imagine’. It actually sounds exactly like you would expect it to. Not that that’s a bad thing: their largely faithful rendition – which simply adds a spot of ragged distortion and features better solos (although the Ram Jam ones were pretty good) – is a lot of fun. And the aforementioned blog is probably correct when it says that ‘there's no way Dinosaur Jr didn't have an absolute blast playing this.’
113 Puke + Cry
Green Mind (1991)
Strives for a funky shuffle, but like ‘Muck’ feels a little leaden and stilted at times. That said, the insistent ‘come on down’ refrain is memorably catchy and there’s a fluid bass line that does its best to anchor things. The dreamy breakdown a minute from the end is also a nice touch.
112 Knocked Around
Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not (2016)
Speaking of dreamy… the first half of this song is delicately meditative, with J offering a quavering falsetto that’s genuinely touching. And then it kicks into a thunderous volley of frantic strumming/drumming topped off with an agile solo. A game of two equally effective halves.
111 Gargoyle
Dinosaur (1985)
There’s more than a touch of Sonic Youth about this dissonant, disjointed track from the debut album. In places it’s almost catchy - especially when the spidery guitar line is at the fore - balanced by an underlying sense of menace, especially in the ghostly, echo-laden mid-section breakdown. Like a lot of this LP, there’s a sense of a young band throwing a shedload of ideas at a song and seeing what sticks.
Comments
Post a Comment