The beginning is entrusted to Little Fury Things, with a piercing scream and heavy distortions à la Husker Du, but hold off on the judgments, the deception is just around the corner: the hardcore progress is often and willingly mixed with softer and more accessible melodies, all serving as a backdrop to a perpetually bored and disinterested voice, which often goes off-key with pleasure: J Mascis lives in his own inner world, and his songs are attempts, not even too convinced, to communicate the incommunicable, to let us share in the ills that afflict him; but he does this considering himself already defeated from the start, hiding, getting drunk to avoid feeling pain: intimacy as the only way to relate to the world.
Often contrasting the resigned attitude of the voice is the music (as if J Mascis is more capable of venting through the guitar than with his voice): as previously mentioned, '80s hardcore (not even too core) meets high-quality indie rock/pop, deliberately and proudly lo-fi, rich in guitar grime.
There’s no need to point out a particular piece, the level is extremely high everywhere, truly. Already mentioned, Lou Barlow on bass, then Murph (?) on drums and, guest on background vocals, Lee Ranaldo.
Champion of '90s American indie rock with the dinosaurs, unlikely and atypical solo storyteller, great pop author with the project The Fog, J represents all of this, but above all, he has given us great songs that have one merit: that of not making you feel alone when everything is going wrong.
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By killrockstar76
Along with 'Daydream Nation,' probably the greatest guitar album ever.
J Mascis hurls tons of decibels into the listener’s ears, avalanches of feedback and wah wah in a way that only he knows how to do.