By Tyler Fassnacht

Ever since the sixth grade, Dinosaur Jr. has accompanied me through my music phases, whether it was classic rock, grunge, catchy pop rock or noise, Dinosaur Jr. was always able to fit in somehow. They always had enough of an edge and strong enough hooks to draw in a variety of music fans and that along with J Mascis’ guitar prowess cemented these guys as gods of guitar driven indie-rock. When I found out the band reunited some years back, I promised myself that I would see them in concert eventually, and two post-reunion albums later, they announced a show at the Majestic.

Opening the evening was Dino bass player, Lou Barlow, playing with the Missing Men as a backing band. He played mostly tracks off of his recently released solo record Goodnight Unknown. The songs swayed from folk-y heartfelt songs, to fast tempo rock, all with surprisingly good transitions. I am a pretty big Sebadoh fan (Lou Barlow’s post Dino group) so seeing him play his own style of music was really nice.

Dinosaur Jr. came out to wild cheers from a mostly packed house and they immediately jumped into their songs. Guitarist J Mascis was backed up by several stacks of Marshall amps, that all towered above him. The sound that the band made was ferocious. Not since I saw Rush have I witnessed such a band worthy of the power trio label, because any more members would have just been overkill. The band played a set list splitting at the seams with old hits and favorites. Songs that stood out were “Little Fury Things”, “Feel the Pain”, “the Wagon” and “Freak Scene” to just name a few. They played several tracks from their excellent new album, Farm that they are currently touring behind. For almost the entire show J Mascis played with his eyes closed while ripping through solos and he didn’t open his mouth to do anything but sing, in fact even when his band mates asked him questions, he just shrugged or shook his head. Having never seen them before, I wasn’t sure if this was normal behavior, but it had no effect on the music, so I didn’t mind. The crowd was fairly mellow for almost the entire show, until some drunk guy finally started an impending mosh pit during “Freak Scene”, the band’s second to last song. After about an hour and a half of playing the band thanked the crowd and left. Nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary happened for a rock show, but I still walked away feeling that I witnessed something special because there are very few bands that have been doing what Dinosaur Jr. does so well for so long.

Buy: Dinosaur Jr. – Farm
MP3: Dinosaur Jr. – “I Want You To Know”