Water [1991]
I've always been perplexed by Green Mind and some people's opinions of it since it came out. I mean surely we all thought it was pretty crap after the astonishingly exhilarating electrifying insanity of You're Living All Over Me and the masterfully crafted devastation of Bug's glorious mess of noisy slacker grunge and the sweet slacker-daisical vision of The Wagon single. Weren't we all disappointed with the lack of fuzzed up loudness on Green Mind? Once they'd released this half baked effort I thought they were finished as a cool, credible and influential cult group. I mean if you weren't absolutely killing it or pushing the envelope musically it was time to move on to somewhere else. There was an abundance of excitement, innovation and peak musical creativity in this era. There was no point hanging around listening to sub standard artistical statements.
I mean J Mascis can be found talking about Green Mind on the youtubes saying: "Maybe it didn't work out as well as it could have"
Yet some people liked it and five years ago many more were getting misty eyed and nostalgic about the 30th anniversary of Green Mind. I didn't get it and thought they'd all lost their minds. Somewhere in the back of my mind though lurked some doubts that maybe I'd been wrong all along about this album. So finally I had a little re-listen and while I haven't had a full revelation or complete reversal of opinion, I've had a surprisingly significant change of heart. I'm pretty sure before I traded in my Green Mind cd in the early 90s I thought it all sucked except for the first and last tracks but now of those eight despised songs only How'd You Pin That One On Me is the only one so irritatingly offensive to me that I have to skip it.
I get why the album was all so startlingly weird and disappointing at the time. A lot of the grunge noise and dreamy haziness had been stripped away for acoustic guitars, stark loud drums and an unnecessary close up focus on J's vocals. On those previously mentioned records the beauty was when J's warm lethargic but melodious vocal hooks were couched in just the right amount of distorted guitar overload for their classic signature languid maelstrom sound.
It's Water that has become my new favourite forgotten Dinosaur Jr. song. In a way it's a precursor to the Neil-isms and crushing melancholy aesthetic blueprint that would be deployed on their 1993 classic Where You Been. Water's got that cool lazy slacker sound. Wait for that 2:28 moment when it accelerates into gorgeous melodic ecstasy. It's J's best trick and it's irresistible.
Blowin It/Live For That Look [1991]
Dinosaur Jr. do the segue song thing once again and it's pretty glorious. I mean I still have my reservations about this record's production but these conjoined songs are undeniably top Mascis tuneage.
*God what next? Am I gonna give Without A Sound another go next to see if maybe my disappointment about that cd was wrong too?
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