There was always something retiring about Dinosaur Jr. Their name alone – appended with that suffix of inferiority, necessary to avoid legal action by way of ‘60s supergroup Dinosaur – was indicative of something slightly less than greatness.
Seeing Dinosaur Jr. live is similarly lacking in pomp – their bashful frontman J Mascis usually appears unanimated to the point of motionlessness. Remember though that Dinosaur Jr. arrived in the ‘80s at a time when post-punk (over)intellectualising was eschewed, with the underground instead favouring something altogether hazier, distant and static. Simon Reynolds discusses much of this in his recent book ‘Still in a Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers and the Reinvention of Rock, 1984–1994’ – including the triumphant understatedness of Dinosaur Jr.
That’s a lot of background, but it matters because Dinosaur Jr. never changed all too much. Their new album continues this trend. Much of the material here could pass for late ‘80’s Dinosaur Jr., not least due to J’s voice remaining ever-youthful – or did he always sound slightly older that he was? Either way, ‘There Near’ is everything that could be expected of a Dinosaur Jr. album in 2026. It’s a fuzzy display of untamed indie rock ennui – and it’s damn good fun too.
J was always one of the more likely ‘80s rockers to, well, rock out. Here however he appears happier than ever to appease his inner-Hendrix. His soloing on songs like ‘Clam Along’, ‘Put It Down’ and ‘No Friends’ is raucous, with licks and riffs that evoke a 16-year-old who’s just discovered pentatonic scales.
Some of the songwriting more generally sounds surprisingly youthful. Opener ‘Several Got Away’ is staggeringly catchy, evoking the slacker pop discernment of ‘90’s contemporaries Pavement. ‘No Friends’, with its melodramatic plea for companionship, is even more inclined towards pubescent emo-isms. Yet when filtered through J’s world-weary vocals, the central conceit of loneliness feels bleakly earnest.
‘Take Me With You’ is sadly not a Prince cover. It is instead a vehicle for one of many riffs that splinter their way through ‘There Near’ like J’s been playing them for years – ‘Gone Off’ even has a guitar lick that’s singable in a Beatlemania head wobble sort of way.
The album’s lead single is also its catchiest. But ‘Blowin Up’ is far more memorable for non-musical reasons. “You’re about as dumb as they come” sings J, before declaring that “there’s nothing quite as bad as a bored edgelord.” It’s perhaps not the most subtle piece of sloganeering, but given the album’s anachronistic sonority, hearing J take on edgelord culture is a fun and unexpected digression.
Other than this mildly surprising takedown, ‘Near There’ feels like it exists within its own world, where the type of music Reynolds writes about in ‘Still in a Dream’ was the endpoint of contemporary music’s want for perpetual progression. None of this necessarily matters, of course, and there are several positives to this. For one, it makes the album easy to recommend to existing fans of the band, and it’s a decent enough entry point for newcomers (even if ‘You’re Living All Over Me’ and ‘Without a Sound’ are more logical examples).
Whether ‘Near There’ is a success largely depends on whether the familiarity of these songs is perceived to be pleasant or regressive. That’s a vexed topic that Simon Reynolds (there he is again) would probably have a lot to say about. Either way, only the stuffiest of grumps would deny that Dinosaur Jr. have for the umpteenth time channelled meandering riffs of distortion, a hybrid of indie and hardcore – and a sympathy for the emotional – into another pleasingly raw series of rockers.
BEN WILLIAMS