Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

For Dinosaur Jr. to still come across as a well-kept secret that is keenly guarded by only those who speak of their music and discography in the same reverential terms as you would hear spoken by those who covet the inner workings, some say magic of a comic store is on first glance hard to understand. Not for nothing is the music something this side of stunning, mind blowing and captivating, it growls with the same force as a yard full of tigers who have spotted someone invading their turf. Yet, it seems, it is perhaps the select army, those who really understand how music gets beneath the skin who know that this band is something very special to watch.

Vibrant from the start, J. Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph gave the assembled in the East Village Arts Club music that the hairs on the back of the neck stand to attention as if being ordered to by a Colour Sergeant in an evil mood. By the end of the opening track, Bulbs of Passion, there wasn’t a still head in the building, with younger fans eagerly taking in the bountiful and expressional guitar playing and the older fans knowing full well that they were seeing the band at perhaps their very best.

The evening may have been short on conversation or interesting titbits from the band but what the audience gets instead is an evening that’s dynamic, supercharged and set on a throttle so high it would make Concorde seem like a tortoise with a badly sprained ankle and carrying a placard saying ‘On go slow’.  That is what you expect though with the band and they do it so well. There is no point listening in to a presidential speech when what the audience craves is the music; that is what they have paid their money for.

The three men from Massachussetts made their way back to the stage for the encores which included The Wagon from Green Mind and an eagerly awaited and in all honesty, brilliant version of The Cure’s Just Like Heaven.

A night at the East Village Arts Club in which it seemed the old rocker stood side by side, smiling just as hard and with the same fascination as the young and more agile fan that certainly wouldn’t have been around when the group first visited these shores. The name may be Dinosaur Jr. however certainly not in musical appreciation, an act that carries everyone in the same direction and with the same gracious quality.

Ian D. Hall