Gig Review: There You Been All This Time! Dinosaur Jr Plays “Where You Been” For Its (Belated) 30th Birthday…

Where You Been Gig Reviews? I hear you’re coming back…? Yay! I see Dinosaur Jr for the second time in a year, and I’m sure glad I do!

Dinosaur Jr

The Town Hall, Auckland

Saturday, March 2

I last saw Dinosaur Jr just six months ago or so. I was in San Francisco on holiday, and had the good luck to time it with the band playing at the Fillmore; that was my first time seeing them in 29 years. How great to have the bus stop outside the house I happened to be in twice in the same year. This time a trip to Auckland. This time they actually did play Where You Been in its entirety.

When I saw the San Fran gig last year it was billed as the start of the 30th Anniversary Tour behind Where You Been. Not true. They played a couple of songs from the album — ones they’d play at most shows (Get Me, Start Choppin’) and then went all over the catalogue. It was, as I said here, such a great gig!

But I was relieved to know that this time they were sticking to the script.

So, it’s out to low-key fanfare, no buzz, no intro music, no screen behind them, no fuss — until an eager audience spots J Mascis scratching at his head, and getting ready to choke the life out of several guitars. And as the audience erupts, Murph begins his assault on the drums. And Lou Barlow (bass) provides the real animation of the evening, looking the most alive and alert and deciding to put on the dance-aspect of what is most definitely not a song-and-dance show. Barlow was not on the original album, but is an original band member — this version of Dinosaur Jr now back in reunion-mode for twice as long as they were ever a group the first time around.

It’s both heartening to see and hear. They sound fantastic. Their music strangled from the soul, but shiny and happy as can be for the most part. Several of Where You Been’s songs acting almost like pop tunes. Out There, our garage-rock opener, sounds (still) like a second coming of Neil Young & Crazy Horse, at least until Mascis warbles in a different way to Neil. Start Choppin’ gives us the first proper pop hook of the night, and is celebratory, with Murph’s 16-note hi-hat dance behind J.’s guitar. So many of these songs feel messy in the loveliest way, warm, woollen jumpers of sound with a loose thread to hang on to…

And if, as on Choppin’, it’s a tighter, pop song in the frame, J. will always colour outside those lines when it gets to the solo.

What keeps me attached to the Dinosaur Jr sound, to seeing them twice within a year with travel each time, to listening to Mascis’s solo albums, to regularly returning to the band’s vast-enough catalogue is the magic-trick of how it simultaneously all sounds exactly the same and stunningly different. These scribble-pattern songs sit so deeply within what I love about deeply unpretentious music.

What Else Is New? is another pop-blast, but On The Way is breakneck-enough to almost be punk-rock; it’s still and always the same band.

Not The Same is brilliantly named, the one song that really sticks out on its own — Mascis taking on not just a Neil Young guitar tone, but embodying his style of falsetto, the drums broken down from being a straight groove, more accents of percussion to add drama. It’s a great way to slow things down not just on the album, but now as we approach the middle of a set of songs for the stage. It sets up Get Me so nicely, the band’s perennial, its solo still sounding somehow more majestic than almost any of the others.

The second half of the album races by with more sludge (Drawerings), more punk-ish grunge (Hide) and more deceptively pretty pop (Goin’ Home). In the context of a set, with extras to follow, the Where You Been show isn’t just a “Classic Album” concert, it feels as much like a Dinosaur Jr Greatest Hits set. Because we know we’re going to get Feel The Pain and The Wagon as other 90s gems (and we do!) And there’ll be some of that great late-80s name-making music from them too (and there is!)

And indeed, the album’s end is signalled by I Ain’t Sayin’ and it’s straight into Garden from 2021’s Sweep It Into Space. Lou Barlow takes the lead vocal, and I choose to see this as his payment/payoff for just playing through the songs on a classic album he was never actually on. At any rate, Garden is a wonderful highlight of seeing Dinosaur Jr live, its chorus somehow heightened from the studio version; a reminder of Barlow’s great pop instincts as a writer, and how Mascis so easily, brilliantly, can sit back into a supporting role.

From there, it’s Been There All The Time, which is a good time — then the brilliant Wagon (from 1991’s Green Mind) and Little Fury Things from their other truly classic record (1987’s You’re Living All Over Me) and then always-huge-when-its-live Feel The Pain; it’s perfect bubble-along verses broken up by a jerk-of-the-neck chorus. Then Barlow informs the crowd that they’re not going to play the usual at this point (Gargoyle) but will in fact go back to the first album to play the not-always-on-the-list, Forget The Swan. It’s wonderful. A glorious set-closer. Epic. Mercurial. But updated from its almost post-punk origins. It really wrings…

They return very quickly for their fairly standard encore of two songs. Freak Scene (from Bug) and their cover of The Cure’s Just Like Heaven. Mascis tore through nearly a different guitar for every song, as if he almost choked them to breaking point by strangling them into submission on the solos. Murph looked like if he saw any other drums or cymbals he would only hit them harder, hence his kit being kept to restricted basics and his pocket deep, his groove impeccable as AC/DC in its way. And Barlow seemed like he was only getting warmed up for an all-night after party.

But just as low-key-wonderful as it had all started, it ended abruptly. Mascis stopped Just Like Heaven so swiftly you could be forgiven for thinking he turned his own power off. He was all but coiling his guitar lead as he waved and walked off in one motion. A simple “Good night” to reflect that, simply, this had been a very good night for fans of Dinosaur Jr. They are their own thing. A band that could only ever disappoint you if you were expecting the wrong thing. Goddamn, I just love this band!