Dinosaur Jr. has always been in tune (no godawful music pun intended) with teenage malaise, but You’re Living All Over Me is the greatest teenager album of all time, not to mention Dino’s personal best, probably for that very reason. You’re probably thinking, what makes it the greatest teenager album ever? And isn’t that distinction artificial and meaningless anyway?
 
Well first off, of course it’s meaningless and arbitrary but worthless commendations are the very bread and butter of music criticism. It’s how critics (and aspiring critics) fool themselves into thinking they have actual power. And as for the important question, you know those teenagers who think that no one understands them? They have not heard this record.

Just like Pete Townsend, John Entwistle, Keith Moon and Roger Daltrey 20-something odd years before them, J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph were making pissed-off, despondent, hopelessly horny music. But unlike The Who, they weren’t grandly conceptual and expansive; The Junior just wanted to make as much noise with as few instruments as possible. Would Pete Townsend ever write a song that is pretty much a couple guitar solos occasionally interrupted by a two-line chorus? Well J Mascis did, and it’s called The Lung and it is fucking awesome.

Granted, Dino’s kind-of self-titled debut yielded them the greatest song they would ever write (the almighty self-deprecation of Forget The Swan) and it showed a lot of promise; they didn’t really have a lot of expectations to live up to with Living, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t rock the bejesus off of it anyway. Little Fury Things (pronounced “furry”) sets the pant-shitting tone with distorted guitar and muffled, agitated voices (provided by Lee Ranaldo) shrieking questions which lead into J’s mumbles about wildlife creatures and failing to get a girl.

A girl, or lack thereof, is the dominant lyrical theme throughout these 40 minutes (the musical one being, of course, a personified “fuck this motherfucking shit”). Raisins - perhaps the album’s best song - explores the simultaneous anger, arousal, depression and awkwardness that accompanies running into an old flame again and again (a common problem throughout the hallways of high schools). J vents his anger by informing this girl that “I know what you did to me/I know what you did was wrong” and that “your life is to torture me” but he seems, in regular teenage fashion, to be unable to get over her because she’ll “have to decide the fate of my sanity.”  In a Jar displays the skepticism and paranoia of the socially downtrodden when a girl actually likes them, and Kracked implores that she should “come and set me free.” The point of many of the “love” songs on Living seems to be that while relationships tend to end horribly leaving scars, you’ll keep going back because it sure beats being alone.

That’s all the lyrical interpretation you’ll get from me, folks - this isn’t Dylan; the songs are plenty decipherable. Besides, when listening to this record, lyrics are really secondary. The thing that jumps out you is J beating the shit out of his Fender, which graciously returns the favor by beating the shit out of your ear drums.

Oh and we should not forget Lou Barlow’s two songwriting credits, Lose and Poledo - all told it’s about 9 minutes of pure, unadulterated self-loathing (“I can't believe I was chosen to exist/'Cause only Jesus Christ can slit his wrists”)…well, okay, “unadulterated” is the wrong word for Poledo. One half is Lou waxing despairingly while playing ukulele and the other is feedback, sound collages and shrieks.  

Poledo is significant because it shows a radical difference in the songs written by Mascis and those written by Barlow. It would seem obvious to people listening to that in 1987 that this probably wasn’t going to last. The Who broke up after a long tenure due to Townsend’s writer’s block, Dino broke up 3 years after their debut because of too much writing. They got back together recently and released the majorly okay Beyond, But it seems likely that this, too, will pass.

We live in an indieverse currently run by the likes of Bright Eyes and Of Montreal, and many of those bands I like, but it’s good every once in awhile, or as often as humanly possible, to lose yourself in riffs, solos and other, high quality musical sludge.
 
Release date: 21/03/05
Artist website: www.dinosaurjr.com
Label: Sweet Nothing

Comments:

Dinosaur Jr. - You’re Living All Over Me Graham Quinn    February 17th, 2008 - 12:53 AM   fab - i'm a dinosaur jr tourist, admittedly, never really taken the time to go deep, but i will be checking this album out on the basis of this review michael - brilliant stuff

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