Review Summary: An overindulgence in pretension, or just incompetence?
Dinosaur jr. is widely hailed as one of the greatest alternative rock bands of all time, though this seems to be a case more of myopic cronyism among the musical elite than for any appreciation of the music. The lead singer sounds like a whinier version of Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, the guitars range from ear pleasing to noisy and weird and the lyrics are simply drivel without any regard to greater depth.
It really cannot be stressed how much the singer of this band sounds like Adam Duritz. But while Counting Crows uses many different instruments in a unique and ear-pleasing way, such as the piano and the mandolin, Dinosaur Jr. is stuck using the same combination of guitar, bass and drums, the guitar only being used to make weird noises as a substitute for any kind of talented playing. An Exception would be the opening riff of "Kracked" which has a driving, toe-tapping rhythm reminiscent of the music from Sonic The Hedgehog. This alone rescued the album from being one of the worst things I've ever heard, although the singer's whining took me out of the enjoyment of the music almost immediately.
This is almost a hallmark of the album, as an ear pleasing guitar riff, sometimes teasing you with the hope that it will break into full on Hard Rock is almost instantly drowned by the whining of the Adam Duritz doppelganger(imitator) that goes into a lame attempt at a guitar solo, with pathetic attempts at shredding that quickly collapses in on itself with missed notes and ugly feedback. It's almost as if they didn't have enough money to record the guitar more than once so they just said "S---w it" and left all the errors and mistakes in there.
Lyrically the album sounds like existential moanings of "who is it, where is it, what is it" nonsense along with some whining about a girl. Life is pointless, "Why is it screaming, It's unfair." Maybe if the lead singer had picked up "The Purpose Driven Life" or "How Should We Then Live" he could write something of substance, although he would still have to do something with his voice to differentiate it from Counting Crows. This follows the theme of the rest of the album: it has no purpose. The entire thing, except for some oddly brilliant passages that shows that there is yet hope for this band, just reeks of laziness, self indulgence and atheism.
