Four-album box set celebrates J Mascis as facemelting avant-metal guitar shredder supreme.
Widely credited as influential catalysts during the grunge goldrush, Dinosaur Jr. took an embryonic Nirvana out on tour before riding the corporate alt.rock wave of the 90s. But listening back to this box set of expanded albums spanning the trio’s major-label peak confirms founder and frontman J Mascis as a far more unorthodox avant-punk noise-metal innovator than his comically lethargic slacker-stoner lumberjack image suggests. Mascis memorably called the Dinosaur sound “ear-bleeding country”, and there are nods to vintage heartland Americana scattered across these four albums. But at full steam they more often sound like an obliterating love-hate assault on classicrock norms, like My Bloody Valentine fronted by Eddie Van Halen in all his maximalist majesty. Adding extra spinetingling texture is Mascis’s voice: a grainy, pained, whimpering croak somewhere between Neil Young and Kurt Cobain.
Initially intending to retire the Dinosaur name when their early indie-label line-up disbanded, Mascis conceived 1991’s as a solo album. He ultimately elected to revive the band with new members, but still plays most of thewith Bowie’s
