Dinosaur Jr. - Dinosaur (1985)
I love Dinosaur Jr. I also gave my ticket to their concert to someone else since going to concerts in my city is maddening. You may know them from their hits, such as _Feel the Pain_, but recently Apple Music recommended one of their first albums to me, Dinosaur.
And it feels raw. And punk. And hardcore. And I didn’t know I liked it so much.
My honest opinions...
The opening track, Bulbs of Passion, already gives us a glimpse of what Dinosaur Jr. really is - dirty and distorted guitars, weird vocals, a lot of yelling, and some more melodic parts where things get a bit emotional. It’s also a quite long track, full of guitar solos.
Forget the Swan seems like something reminiscent from the post-punk genre. The vocals are different, probably from Lou Barlow instead of J Mascis. Was Lou already in Dinosaur? Well, it sounds emotional later with a little acoustic guitar playing.
I just love how the sound is so dirty and analog in all of those recordings. You can feel some kind of warmth from the tapes.
The Leper has a nice guitar intro that plays for about a minute and reminds us that you don’t need agility to play guitar - you need to be creative with how you use your gear. The heavy distortion makes the solos feel very interesting, while the riffs played are pretty simple. The simple solos and the very specific distortion J Mascis use are very characteristic from Dinosaur Jr.
Does it Float makes me wonder - does punk rock work with digital media? In a way, punk rock feels like physical zines, collages, dirty stuff, lo-fi distortion. I know it also has the political side to it - communism and anarchy altogether, being antifascist, rage against the machine, but the digital is a way to trap and to try to clear up the dirt caused by the analog.
Maybe you can be alternative and record punk rock on GarageBand or whichever DAW you use. Maybe the idea of punk rock was a byproduct of its time, and now we have something else (such as bedroom pop, artists like Clairo and Alex G.)
Severed Lips is classical mellow J. Mascis stuff. I love it, I love the contrast between punk-hardcore stuff for more mellow things only Dinosaur Jr. can give you.
In summary, I would definitely have this album in my cassette tape collection (if I had one, and I wish I had one) since this is the kind of music that would leverage the dirt, warmth of a good ol' well worn tape.