Weirdness Flows: The Songs of Dinosaur Jr

             Before we head into the top 30, a quick note... Along the road, inevitably, I've had quite a few comments along the lines of, "What?!? xxx should definitely be in the top 5/10/20'' etc. Which is only to be expected and is absolutely fair enough; I expect I'd be saying exactly the same sort of thing if I was reading someone else's list.  One other type of comment that has cropped up frequently, however, has been the suggestion that I must have 'come to the party late' or 'clearly only got into the band in 20xx'. Whilst I do sort of understand how some might come to that impression, it's not actually true. I fell in love with Dinosaur Jr in the summer of 1989. I was a student who needed somewhere to crash for the summer, and ended up staying in a friend-of-a-friend's room. He had an impressively large record collection, and so I bought a stack of C90s and set to taping:  Bug and YLAOM were among the first LPs I copied, and tha...

            40 Pick Me Up Beyond (2007) Perfectly placed between the understated melancholy of ‘Crumble’ and the dark, brooding ‘Back To Your Heart’, ‘Pick Me Up’ is a furiously pugnacious rocker, packed with snarling, metal-ish riffing. You get a breather in the middle, the band taking their foot of the gas for a minute or so before J launches into a long, fiercely aggressive solo, rounded off with a grandiose, prog-like finale.    39 Pieces Farm (2009) Dinosaur Jr do seem to have a habit of selecting cracking tunes to open their albums. Eight of the twelve are in my top 50 (‘Forget The Swan’ wasn’t far behind at number 57), and here we are at number 39 and there are still five more to go after this one. In typical fashion, ‘Pieces’ sees Farm burst from the starting blocks with vigour. Framed around a cascading riff, it crackles with energy, over which J intones a measured, if rather sentimental vocal (‘I need some help to grab the pieces of ou...

           And so we reach the heady heights of the top 50... 50 Goin Home  Where You Been (1993) A gentle country-ish lilt, coloured with falsetto backing vocals, delicately picked acoustic and splashes of airy keyboards. It’s melancholy but inspiring in an subtle manner. The disconsolate lyric (‘I can’t get lower… I’ve been beaten’) is rounded off in a resigned yet optimistic tone: ‘People tell me that you miss me / and I guess I'm doin' fine.' The Wild West-themed video is not, perhaps, one their most inspired. 49 Little Fury Things You're Living All Over Me (1987) An in-your-face, raucous tornado of an intro gives way to dreamy, languid melody, which in turn morphs into a loose-limbed groove followed by a sprightly passage reminiscent of The Cure, although overall there's more of a Sonic Youth vibe to it ( Lee Ranaldo contributes backing vocals) . The rest of the song carefully merges these seemingly disparate elements into a satisfyingly cohesive...

          60 Crumble Beyond (2007) Beautifully understated and elegant moment from Beyond , with one of J’s most plaintive and delicate vocals. Features one of those simple but gut-wrenching chord changes (‘built a picture yesterday’) that, on the first pass, leads into a compact, exquisitely restrained solo.    59 Good To Know Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not (2016) Back to the hectic stuff: a thunderous intro gives way to a classic garage-punk riff; the chorus (‘not my love…’) is built around abrasive, squalling shards of wah-wah. Throw in an intricate high-register solo and you have a winning concoction.   58 Ocean in The Way Farm (2009) Towards the less frenetic end of the spectrum, ‘Ocean’ has a distinctive, thoughtful swagger. The crashing chords are deceptively simple, bolstering a tale of regret and confusion (‘there's an ocean inside of my mind / it's all so murky, the truth's hard to find’). The emergence of the solo at 2:50 is, if you’l...