Dinosaur Jr at the Electric Ballroom

Dinosaur Jr
Cheatahs
Death At Sea
Electric Ballroom, February 4 2013

I actually aimed to miss support act Death At Sea as I had seen them before last year opening for Haim and was pretty unimpressed but alas for once London transport didn't let me down and I actually arrived early. I can't say they won me over this time either but it was very strange to see them again as they seemed like an entirely different band.
Last time, when playing to Haim's audience, they sounded like a typical indie pop band, I even used the word polished in my post about the show, but this time they came out and played what sounded like a diluted Sonic Youth song and then added more feedback and distortion to the rest of the set for a slightly more ragged sounding show than before. If this sounds more promising, it was certainly a little less bland but not particularly great. Their look was even different: gone was the One Direction/Bieber hair with most of the band looking a little more shaggy now and the singer opting instead for a shorter hairdo. Dinosaur Jr were "heroes" of theirs, they said, but having seen them before it all felt a little contrived, a band trying to fit in with the main act's audience, which doesn't say much for their authenticity to say the least.

A lot more promising was the next act on, Cheatahs, a London-based band with an American frontman who are clearly more than familiar with My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver and the whole shoegaze movement. There were lots of beautifully noisy guitars blurring into a gorgeous shimmering wall of distortion. They weren't particularly original but there was something really transportive and enveloping about their music, which definitely had more than a little Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth influence in there too. It's funny to see all these 90s influenced bands like Cheatahs and Yuck emerging especially when, like me, you saw it first time round, but it's hard to argue when they do it so well and I definitely was pleasantly surprised by Cheatah's wonderfully loud set.

It's really hard to put into words what Dinosaur Jr's music has meant to me over the years, particularly when I was a teenager. Other girls my age were obsessing over movie stars or teen idol singers and I was obsessing over J. Mascis and his feedback-fuelled solos that sent me into another world and his beautifully sad lyrics that at times had me sobbing like a baby. I don't think any song combined those elements better than Get Me, from 1993's Where You Been, which honestly left me in tears once when I heard it live, each of Mascis' emotion-filled guitar notes sounding like a hopeless sob that dug into my angsty teenage heart. For someone seemingly so stoic and laconic J's music was filled with so much feeling and seemed to say so much. Sadly Get Me wasn't on the set list tonight (although apparently they had been playing it at the start of this UK tour) but they did play one of my favourite ever Dinosaur songs, Start Choppin, and I admit I almost cried when J started playing the jangly opening chords, it sounded so wonderful. I sang along to every line and the teenage girls besides me rather endearingly were jumping up and down in joy, they too were so happy to hear it.

The set started with some old favourites (The Lung, Budge, The Wagon) all of which got the crowd jumping before giving us a few tracks from the latest album, I Bet On Sky, which I must say sounded great. But when the wailing guitar intro for Out There started I couldn't help but feel excited, as cool as I'd like to be sometimes, hearing the classics is thrilling. Feel The Pain felt the same way, the lyrics may be full of misery but the sound was joyous. As for the dynamics on stage, Murph the drummer was as always amazing to watch, I hadn't seen him up this close in years, and he seemed to be enjoying it all as much as the audience, even laughing at Lou Barlow's silly jokes and joining in with his in between song improvisations. J was, as usual, a man of few words and emotions but amusingly looked visibly pissed when Barlow was messing about, standing there impatiently waiting for the shenangians to stop so he could get on with the next song. I'd love to know how they really get on off stage but maybe the tensions help make the music better because certainly they haven't lost any of their power on stage.

Elsewhere they rather nicely played a Deep Wound song (Mascis and Barlow's first band together), Training Ground, which Lou told us was about going to college and there was an outing for early track Gargoyle as well as the obligatory Freak Scene. When they arrived back for the encore they looked like they hadn't a clue what to play and there seemed to be a gathering around the drumkit to decide. Of course people shouted out titles leading Barlow to respond, "Tell us songs you'd like to hear that we're not going to play". In the end it seemed like Lou made the decision for the band telling the crowd "how about a Cure cover" to which J didn't look too thrilled but he gamely launched into their cover of Just Like Heaven and then rounded things off with a gloriously heavy and messy Sludgefeast, which certainly more than lived up to its name.

All these years on Dinosaur Jr still sound as vital and soul-stirring as ever, and they look cooler as older men than I had ever hoped, J with his long white hair and wizardly beard, Lou with his mop of youthful curls and Murph with his Gollum-like bald head. Definite proof that some reunions can surpass all expectations.