Jurassic 'Farm': Dinosaur Jr. is back

(Credit: Michael Weintrob)

There’s a long, long list of influential bands that have broken up and later reformed for reunion tours, but not very many of those bands generate new music when they get back together—and even fewer still make new music that legitimately carries the torch from their golden era. “I can’t even think of one,” Lou Barlow admits with a laugh. When the formative Dinosaur Jr. lineup—Barlow on bass, Murph on drums and J Mascis on vocals and guitar wizardry—got back together a few years ago, it seemed like they wouldn’t go much beyond promoting some sorely needed reissues.

But then came a solid reunion album, 2007's “Beyond,” followed by this year’s even better “Farm,” which pulls off the neat trick of blending the trio’s aggressive, groundbreaking alt-rock sound from the mid- to late ‘80s with the more polished sonics of the major label albums in the post-Nirvana ‘90s (sans Barlow, who had gone on to further secure his place in indie rock history by forming Sebadoh and the Folk Implosion).

Prior to setting off on their fall tour, Barlow dialed up Metromix to talk about Dinosaur’s surprising rebirth, BMX mishaps, and the challenge of opening up for his own band.

Are you surprised to again be playing new music with Dinosaur?
Yeah. I mean, the general attitude of the band is so cynical that I didn’t even think we’d start making new records. I thought that was something we wouldn’t even attempt because it could have been so lame. But it was pretty inspiring—J just threw himself into it and generating songs, and we just started recording. That seems kind of miraculous to me.

You have a new solo record (“Goodnight Unknown”), and you’ll be opening the Dinosaur Jr. shows. That’s a pretty unusual situation. What’s the toughest opening slot you’ve ever been in?
Um…this could be it. [Laughs] Looking at it now, it seems kind of tough. I imagine once we get into the swing of things, it will be easy, but right now I just don’t know how it’s going to go. I’m a little anxious about it because it wasn’t exactly a popular decision. It’s a balancing act.

And “Goodnight Unknown” isn’t too much like “Farm.”
No, it’s not. It’s not. [Laughs] But I’m hoping we can hit the common ground between the two bands so it  flows from one thing to the next. For me, it’s going to be great. I’m really into playing a lot every night. Every time that I’ve ever opened for Dinosaur acoustically, by the time I hit the stage with Dinosaur, I feel really great and worked up for it.

To flip the question around a bit, have you ever had an especially tough act to follow?
I don’t know if this necessarily pertains to Dinosaur, but when I was in Sebadoh, we had several bands blow us away. [Laughs] There was a band called Dog Faced Hermans from Scotland, an agit-pop band sort of like Gang of Four. They were short-lived, but had a moment in the sun with the indie cognoscenti. They were fucking amazing—and they totally blew us away. With Dinosaur, it was cool because when we first started, we would be the band that would be opening for the older punk bands and we’d be kind of blowing them away.

Years ago, you were asked in an interview to compare L.A. and New York. You said New York was a place for iconoclasts and L.A. was a place for conformists. Now that you, ahem, live in L.A., has your view softened?
[Guffaws] I said that?!

Apparently!
Everybody generally has to end up eating their words about L.A. eventually. 

That was my “Meet the Press” portion of the interview.
[Laughs] We have a book of quotes about California. There’s a Death Cab for Cutie song from “The Photo Album” called “Why You’d Want to Live Here.” It’s this nasty song about L.A., and it’s in this book of quotes. I saw [Death Cab frontman] Ben Gibbard at an Animal Collective show in L.A. a couple of months ago, and I was like, “Hey, how ya doing?” and he’s like, "Well, I’m moving to L.A." What?! You live in L.A. now, after you wrote that goddamn song? He was like, “Yeah, I don’t know, I’ve really changed my mind!”

You, J and Murph are the formative Dinosaur trio, but the band had a life in those in-between years, and some fans are surely coming out because of albums like “Green Mind” and “Where You Been.” How much are you digging into that part of that catalog, and what’s it like for you to get acquainted with that material?
We actually just added one called “Get Me” from “Where You Been,” and we play “Thumb” from “Green Mind.” I like playing those songs. I wasn’t so into the mid-period Dinosaur recordings, but at the core of all those songs, J’s craft and gift for melody are there. I find them easy to remember and fun to play. I also like feeling like we’re giving a well-rounded show that represents the band even beyond the stuff I played on.

In the video for “Over It,” your stunt double busts out some sweet moves on his bike. Do you—or did you—have a daredevil streak?
No. No, I was actually not that at all. I tried to go up a ramp once with a BMX bike and just flew right over the handlebars. I think my parents instilled a fear in me at a very early age. What’s really sad is that I’m instilling that same fear in my children now. “Oh, be careful! Watch out!”