Dinosaur Jr.: "Over It"

The rebirth of Dinosaur Jr. for 2007’s Beyond still strikes me as one of the more incongruous resurrections this decade, one of many seemingly determined to relive the best (or nearly best, or roughly passable) parts of the late ’80s and ’90s all over again. Those dudes were supposed to fucking hate each other, and unlike the Pixies (where one member was working childrens’ birthday parties or some such thing), or Blur (where one member kept running for parliament), all three were kept busy with other rock projects. At first it didn’t seem to make any sense, but Beyond turned out to be a gleeful, totally fulfilling exercise in straight ahead rock and roll, an album that I love unabashedly.

Now Dino Jr. are back with Farm, a longer, messier album even more chock-full of Mascis’ unbelievable guitar-heroics and Murph-and-Barlow magic in the rhythm section. It’s goofy, it’s fun, and it’s just in time for summer. The first track we have from the record sums the whole thing up nicely: there’s not a spare second here, as Mascis lays in from the go, his guitar all fist-pumping, anthemic rave-up, with Barlow and Murph in lock-step behind him. Dude may be bummed out, but he seems determined to work it out in proper rock fashion. The kicker is the video, with each member proving themselves the overgrown teenagers we always pretty much knew they were. Some things just don’t change with time, and sometimes that’s for the best.