Tracks
Dinosaur Jr.: "What If I Knew..."
(2007)
By Philip Guppy | 31 January 2008
Compilation mixes are the secret decoder ring of the music obsessive. Some songs just make more sense when strung together with a batch of other personal choices, rhythmically punched into position like rivets in your own individual song cycle, recycled into a statement of purpose: a morning journey, a musical playbook, hell, even an “I love you.” This is where “What If I Knew...” now lives for me: on the bus at 6:30 in the morning, the melodic comedown between the cradle-snatching NYC come-on of “Pink Steam” and The Mountain Goat’s tale of an acid-dealing running back, slotting in far better here, on my mixtape, than closing out the reformed Dinosaur Jr.'s new album. Everything about this song screams “Where You Been”; all you need is a lumberjack shirt and a Converse heel click and you're back in '93. Check those sudden gear shifting guitar solos, electric sine waves spread out like burning aviation fuel across Mascis' disintegrating relationship; check that same glue-eyed, sleep-deprived prairie whine, yawning vocal confusion like a stoner facing calculus. When it's written down in print it reads like a retreat, an attempt to rope past glories, but on the stereo it's simply the thrill of being 16, young and stupid. The moment Mascis decides to spray out another head back, foot down guitar workout, you’re a long tongued dog hanging out of a speeding car.
Mascis always had a way with a clever/dumb couplet, his vocalization going some way to obscuring any knowing turn of phrase. That same skill still runs through “What If I Knew....” Over a steady strolling guitar line and drop-n-pop drumbeat he pokes fun at his advancing years: “Waiting, fading, contemplating all my love, penetrated by the waistline I've become.” With a shake of his silver witch's barnet, he manages to fire up a few more synapses, yelping out a plea to start over that flicks into another pool of gasoline guitar like a lit match (“Take it back and run away! Take it back and run away!”). They're not taking this anywhere but home, out of time and proud. Where did I put that Soundgarden t-shirt again?
Mascis always had a way with a clever/dumb couplet, his vocalization going some way to obscuring any knowing turn of phrase. That same skill still runs through “What If I Knew....” Over a steady strolling guitar line and drop-n-pop drumbeat he pokes fun at his advancing years: “Waiting, fading, contemplating all my love, penetrated by the waistline I've become.” With a shake of his silver witch's barnet, he manages to fire up a few more synapses, yelping out a plea to start over that flicks into another pool of gasoline guitar like a lit match (“Take it back and run away! Take it back and run away!”). They're not taking this anywhere but home, out of time and proud. Where did I put that Soundgarden t-shirt again?