I'm going through a little '80s nostalgia and listening to a lot of Dinosaur Jr. lately. (Primarily on an iPod, so my Last charts are generally failing to capture this meta-experience.) I'm struck by how simple and straightforward they are. No artiface--not much art at all, for that matter. I was never really a huge fan back in the day. Practically wore out a tape of Green Mind one year, with a little Bug to boot, but that was it. They never mattered to me like Fugazi, or the Huskers, or the Pixies. They were just a band, not life partners.
But that's probably why Dinosaur Jr. still holds some curiosity for me today, when I'm a lot more likely to listen to Bill Evans or Brad Mehldau, or Helen Merrill and Clifford Brown. There's something refreshing about their frankly unstylized, fuck-all approach. It seems particularly relevant in today's get-it-done, get-it-out-the-door, move-on-to-the-next-thing environment. Unfussy. Chinese Democracy it ain't.
