To put it neutrally: Dinosaur Jr. always do the same thing. I can’t even remember their previous album; it was just like the one before that anyway. Or like the new one. There Near doesn’t symbolise a statement or the start of a new era, but is actually just another new album by Dinosaur Jr.
The US band can still write brilliant songs: the opener ‘Several Got Away’ thrives on a repetitive nursery-rhyme-style vocal melody, the sort we’ve always loved Dinosaur Jr. for (and which Kurt Cobain also borrowed from them). Frontman J Mascis repeatedly draws on similar harmonic material, effortlessly conjuring up catchy hooks and riffs – as in the standout track ‘No Friends’, which has that ultra-melodic edge I want to hear from Dinosaur Jr.
Over time, the whole thing wears a bit thin; it doesn’t feel lively enough over the course of a full album. At some point, the vocals sound a tad too listless to me, the lyrics a bit too meaningless. ‘It’s time to leave it all behind’, it says, yet you never get the impression that J Mascis actually wants to leave anything behind. In this respect, the songwriting on There Near isn’t necessarily worse than on older Dinosaur Jr. records; perhaps we’ve simply heard it all too often by now. Unlike the guitar solos, though. J Mascis continues to wring out smacking storms of strings from his Fender Jazzmaster – and I can never get enough of them.
