“Can you hear me? This is getting super loud.”
I’m speaking with Dinosaur Jr. drummer Patrick “Murph” Murphy — well, notspeaking with him so much as waiting for the noise to subside as he sits in the back room of Berlin’s Astra club waiting for the opening band to finish their soundcheck. There’s something appropriate about the interruption, though — for better and sometimes for worse, Murph and the rest of Dinosaur Jr. have allowed the sheer noise of rock to do the talking.
The brainchild of Joseph “J” Mascis, Dinosaur Jr. rose from the ashes of Amherst hardcore weirdos Deep Wound. When Mascis switched from the oompa-loompa martial constraints of punk drumming to the blitzkrieg roar of his Jazzmaster, he dragged fellow Deep Wounder Lou Barlow into the bass chair and recruited Murph from fellow hardcore outfit All White Jury. Despite their tangled roots in hardcore, Dinosaur Jr. were destined to forge their own road, thanks not only to the mopy drawl of Mascis’s new batch of tunes (inspired in part by his Cure and Wipers records) but also by his dictum to his new bandmates that this outfit was going to be loud.
“There’s a certain power and intensity when you’re hitting drums,” says Murph. “When J switched to guitar, he wanted to feel that same power, and the only way he could do that was to be, like, super loud and play at an incredibly high volume. Lou and I were just like, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ “
Totally. During the band’s initial three-album, four-year run, Dinosaur scorched earth with their violently tuneful rock gorgeousness, a sound that was equal parts noisy squall, chugging riffola, and lush melancholy. Their second album, 1987′s You’re Living All over Me (SST), is one of the most fully realized rock visions ever put to wax, an effortless mix of distorto buzz with overt nods to then-über-uncool classic rock. Mascis had committed the ultimate punk-rock sin: bringing back the guitar solo and using sheer volume to fuse it to the post-hardcore wasteland of late ’80s rock. He also perfected a delivery that doomed him to be forever described as “laconic,” his laid-back croak — part Nick Cave and part Skynyrd — providing the perfect foil for the tumult behind him.
But though Mascis’s near-catatonic demeanor gave the band an alluring mystique, his stonewalling stoicism also revealed his need for tight control of the music. As Dinosaur’s knotted arrangements moved farther from three-chord punk, Mascis pushed his bandmates to maintain his vision.
“There were drum parts that I just couldn’t play,” says Murph. “Working with J has always been kind of like being in school — there’s a lot of learning involved. In the beginning, it was really intimidating and really frustrating, because J was super-critical, especially of the drums, so I always felt like I was under the gun.”
The immolation of that initial line-up is by now the stuff of legend. After touring 1989′s Bug(SST), Mascis told Barlow Dinosaur Jr. were breaking up, only to re-form the band without Barlow, who then used his home-recording side project Sebadoh to direct thinly veiled jabs toward his old bandmate. The rise of alt-rock in the early ’90s made both Mascis’s Dinosaur Jr. (who were now on Sire) and Barlow’s Sebadoh (on Sub Pop) major-label household names. Which in some ways only served to elevate Dinosaur’s internal squabbles into public drama.
At the same time, Barlow was proving himself an adept songsmith in his own right while Mascis was leading Dinosaur Jr. even farther from his punk roots — 1991′s Green Mind(1991) and Where You Been (1993, both Sire/Reprise) saw him broadening the band’s sound into the realms of country and folk, with timpani and other symphonic touches melding into a dense forest of layered production that would become his trademark sound.
By 2005, Barlow and Mascis had buried the hatchet, and with Murph back in the fold (he had quit in ’94), Dinosaur Jr.’s original line-up reconvened. “It’s not like we had to recapture anything,” says Murph. “Within playing for 20 minutes, we could just sense the energy.” The two albums already under their belts prove the reunion is no fluke — this rare second chance is to be taken seriously. “When I left the band,” Murph continues, “there was a certain amount of freedom, but I always missed the power that I never could achieve with anyone else. And Lou had the same sense, we both wished we could feel the power and intensity that surged through this band again.”
This year’s Farm (Jagjaguwar) finds Mascis loosening his grip more than on any previous Dinosaur LP — not only in the inclusion of wistful Barlow warhorses like “Your Weather” and “Imagination Blind,” but in the way Barlow’s bass and vocals and Murph’s fill-heavy attacks are woven into the arrangement of every tune. It’s as though he had finally found the perfect way to tie their musical contribution into his vision.
Right before the opening band start checking again — and before our connection is saturated in pure noise — Murph leaves me with a final assurance: “Now we’re happier people, and playing is so much more enjoyable. Maybe because we’re on more equal footing now, but whatever it is, that first kernel of energy we had is still there. It just feels natural.”
DINOSAUR JR. LOU BARLOW & THE MISSINGMEN | Middle East downstairs, 472 Mass Ave, Cambridge | October 2 and 3 at 9 pm | 18 | $25 | 617.864.EAST orwww.mideastclub.com
