I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: DINOSAUR JR.-Farm (2009).

I’ve been a fan of Dino Jr since my friend Al introduced me to Green Mind (I had missed the “classic” line up but caught this newer incarnation).  And I loved it.  I have enjoyed just about everything that J. Mascis has put out (although yes, there have been a few duds).

I missed the first reunion album (and will likely get it one of these days) but I had heard a few tracks from this disc on a pitchfork TV segment on IFC (if you can track down the show, it’s great).  This one featured two Dino Jr tracks recorded live (?) in what looks like an attic.  It sounds great and sounds very close to the record, but I hadn’t had the record yet so I don’t know if it was just a video or a new recording).

On the disc, the band sounds fantastic.  The thing I loved about Dino in the post-Barlow/Murph stage was J Mascis’ amazing guitar work that morphed with his almost-beyond-slacker singing.  He sings like such an under-achiever that it was amazing his guitar solos were so blistering.

What has changed on the new disc is that his vocals are a little less lazy/whiny sounding, he seems to be actually singing!  And his guitar work sounds even better.  The strangest thing is that even when he pulls off a hugely long guitar solo like on the nearly 9 minute “I Don’t Wanna Go There” he never sounds like a show off.  The songs aren’t there to highlight the solos, rather, the solo sounds like an integral part of the song.

And this disc offers all of the things that the band is good at: lengthy guitar solo tracks like I mentioned and rocking fuzzed out guitar jams.  And despite all of Dino’s noisy guitars and squalling solos they also wrote some amazingly catchy pop songs.  And that’s true here, too (“Over It” and “I Want You to Know”).

I have been a little confused as to what inspired the band to reunite.  I mean, Lou Barlow had a very successful thing with Sebadoh and Folk Implosion (scoring a huge hit with “Natural One”).  And on this record, he only contributes two songs.  So, it can’t be any kind of ego thing.  I assume they just enjoyed playing together again.

But Barlow’s contributions add a lot to the record.  A sense of depth in the verses and, of course, the utterly different sound than what Masics brings on his vocal tracks.

The disc came with a bonus disc of 4 songs: 2 covers and 2 Mascis solo pieces.  They’re not essential, but they do show a lighthearted side of the band.

[READ: January 25, 2010] “Safari”

I wasn’t initially that interested in this piece.  I’m not big on the whole safari thing, but I thought I’d give it a try.  And I’m really glad I did.  This story went in so many different directions, and covered so much ground, that it was practically a novel condensed into seven pages.

The story starts with Lou’s children.  Lou and his children (and his nanny/student protegé/lover) are on a safari in Africa.  Over the course of the story we learn that there are several other people on the safari with them (a rock star and his band, some older ladies who are birdwatching, Albert, the driver and, my favorite, Dean–a young actor who states the obvious).  But we begin just with this family.

Rolph, who is 8 still looks up to his dad somewhat, but Charlie, the daughter is rebellious.  We see her rebelling through her nascent sexuality at a fireside dance with native warriors.  Over the course of the story, Lou has conversations with his son about women (basically about how they are crazy (and several impolite words are thrown around by Lou in front of Rolph)).  So we learn his opinions and attitudes and how they will impact his family later in life.

When I mentioned that the story goes all over the place, the story is more or less about their travel into the bush.  That’s where all the action happens (and there’s real action when the group spots a lion pride feeding).  But, the story travels some interesting detours: Mindy (the nanny) is a studying for her PhD, and so we get several paragraphs with anthropological notations: (Structural Affection, Structural Desire etc).  We learn an awful lot about Mindy through her academic understanding of anthropology.

Mindy also learns that she is the object of desire on the trip (and not just from Lou).   And through this event we learn a great deal about the Lou, Mindy and the third person.  What I enjoyed about this is that the triangle is not revealed until a little while after the event causing retroactive jealousy on Lou’s part.

So, Lou plans to “win” her in the only way he knows how.  And we see the near future of Lou and Mindy and, ultimately how their story ends up.

Later, we learn about the musicians on board and why they are there (Lou is producing an album) and that the band has a contest for who can see the most animals on the trip.  Later, during the feeding, one of the band members takes the contest a little too seriously, which is very exciting.

As the story reaches the end, we flash forward to Rolph and Charlie’s futures, and how depressing they turn out to be.

And yet, all of these flash-forwards (and flashbacks) come in the context of this one safari.  I can’t decide if it’s sophisticated to be able to wend all of these branches into such a good story, but regardless, I thought it was great.   The pacing, the tangents, the vulgarities, the action, it was all really good.  I also enjoyed the intellectual sections about Mindy’s PhD.

In many ways, the story seems to be all over the place, but really, it nicely and compactly completes a family story and how one major event impacts all of their lives.  It was very cool.

And it’s available here.