Album Details

• Artist: Dinosaur Jr.
• Album: You're Living All Over Me
• Label: SST
• Year of Release: 1987
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: charlesmartel on 2013-01-01

Anyway, before this nonentity disappeared from the radar, she had a minor hit called "Will I Ever". Now what has all this got to do with Dinosaur Jr's You're Living All Over Me? Well, two things. First of all, this album is full of catchy pop, just like Ms Deejay's single. And second, the album from which Ms Deejay's single was taken had the sneering title of "Who Needs Guitars Anyway."

Well, Dinosaur Jr make albums drenched in guitars and have done so for more than 20 years. Perhaps if Ms Deejay had followed their lead she wouldn't have had to go back to working shifts on the checkout of her local supermarket in the same drab public housing estate which spawned her, hoping some ASBO will knock her up so the council will advance her to the front of the housing queue where she can bring up her feral brats - "maggots who haven't the sense to become flies" as Jarvis Cocker calls them - on state handouts and the proceeds from selling crystal meth to bored kids who are waiting until they turn thirteen so they can get pregnant like their grandmother currently is.

J. Mascis is one of those people who you either love or loathe. One of the few indie guitarists who indulges in solos (Doug Martsch is another) and as a consequence how you relate to Dinosaur Jr is how you relate to guitars and solos. Yes, words are there, but they are buried behind thick lashings of distorted and screeching guitars. So, when you listen to "Kracked" you think at first that is normal, straightforward indie rock, nothing to write home about until Mascis cuts loose with that solo. Indeed, that pretty much describes the format of all of the tracks on this album. Modest little numbers enlivened by thirty seconds or so of damn good guitar work.

And yet, this is designed to be, and is, accessible pop music. In the same way as their contemporaries, the Pixies, produced a classy little pop number called "Debaser" out of a mass of guitar drenched noise, Dinosaur Jr have managed the same thing - only with pretty much each track. OK, the boring oddity "Poledo" we can gloss over, and the cover of the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" ends too abruptly and was a classy pop number anyway even before Dinosaur Jr got hold of it, but the rest is all pretty much accessible guitar driven pop. What interests me is, having bought You're Living All Over Me after I bought their reunion album Beyond, just how similar the two are, despite the twenty year gap. Probably the only difference is that the sheer noise component is greater on You're Living All Over Me as it has not had production smooth the edges off.

So, back to the start of the review. "Will I Ever" sang Ms. Deejay. Sorry, dear, no you fucking won't!

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