Dinosaur Jr. Takes Boston to Paradise

On Saturday night at the Paradise, UMass alums Dinosaur Jr. brought their intense melodies and insane guitar work back to Boston for the first time since the release of their latest album, Beyond. For a show featuring dudes old enough to be your dad, it rocked much harder than most indie bands do today. Satisfying both longtime fans now in their forties (or beyond), twentysomethings who felt the pain in middle school, and XX-handed minors who’ve just begun digging into the band’s catalog after picking up Beyond, the show encompassed most of the band's catalog, and further proved that Dinosaur Jr.’s dual reunions in the studio and on the stage have been historic additions to the music scene in 2007.

The show could easily have been about nostalgia, but it served primarily as a serious reminder that the guys in the band can still play hard enough to bust your eardrums—and that's all they want to do. No suggestion of the famed tension between bassist Lou Barlow and guitarist J. Mascis surfaced during the show, but the two men did keep to their own sides of the stage, with drummer Murph anchoring the band with his kit at center stage. Both J. and Lou were surrounded by mountains of amps, lending a visual element to the idea that Dinosaur Jr. is all about the sound.

J.’s infamous hair was highlighted in many different ways by the variously colored lights, creating effects that were eerie at some times and psychedelic at others. The vocals were consistently hard to hear, but Dinosaur Jr. has always been more about cacophony than clear communication, anyway. The band barely said a word between songs, and the noisy show was a far cry from middle school days spent laying in bed and joining in the plaintive lament, “You’re not gonna get me through this, are you?”

Whether you went into the show expecting old-school favorites or new tunes from Beyond, you weren’t disappointed. From a frenetic version of “Feel the Pain” with a manically fast chorus to expert takes on the finely crafted gems on Beyond, the songs reflected both where the band has been and where they are now. Murph’s “Grunge is Dead” t-shirt confirmed that Dinosaur Jr. is no longer caught up in the early 1990s, when grunge was a term used to describe almost any band with guitars, but have come into their own and earned the right to define their own sonic choices.

The kind of straight up rock—no gimmicks, no pretense, no fancy outfits, no banter, no tambourines—that Dinosaur Jr. offers is getting rare today, and it’s nice to have a band persist in playing rocking riffs unaccompanied by unnecessary adornment. Openers Awesome Color and The Warblers couldn't hold a candle to the main act, but offered solid sets of fun indie Brit-pop and plaid-shirted Americana jams, respectively.

If you have a chance to see this Dinosaur before it (once again) becomes extinct, do it—or suffer like a 9-year-old who knows he'll never get to relive the Jurassic. You can catch 'em in DC tomorrow night, but thereafter the tour dates get farther and farther away.

Photo of J. from flickr user Björnstar