J Mascis & the Fog, The Mercury, November 21

J Mascis & the Fog

The Mercury, November 21

Evolution is a slow process. After 15 years of Dinosaur Jr., J Mascis seems poised to take that logical leap into reinvention on the heels of his bright new album More Light. All it took, however, was one wailing screech of appropriate opener "What Else Is New" to remind the Mercury faithful that Mascis is Dinosaur Jr. -- for better or worse. And as the rhythm section ground to a sudden halt and the purple-clad Dinosaur tore off one of his patented extended solos, contorting the song into a thousand screaming shards of melody, we were reminded why J Mascis is still the one guitar god it's okay to like. Buoyed by bassist/DIY legend Mike Watt (fIREHOSE, Minutemen) and George Berz (Dinosaur's last drummer), Mascis then loosed the first two cuts off More Light. The tight, anthemic "Sameday" is a worthy successor to "The Wagon," replete with falsetto backing vocals, delivered here by the lower-octaved Watt, but "Wastin" suffers without the atmospheric flourishes of album collaborator Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine), who nearly committed to touring stateside with the Fog. He could have come in handy when Mascis whipped out Dino classic "The Lung," since the chord progression prohibits Mascis from playing and singing the chorus at the same time. Still, the axe-grinding sonic blender at the end sounded as fresh as that first revelatory spin of You're Living All Over Me. If the too-slack-to-sing-on-key aesthetic was refreshing in 1987, though, it hasn't aged well. The midpoint of the set found Mascis plodding along through the new material like a Dinosaur in this dot-com world: out of key, out of tune, out of touch. Watt, meanwhile, was reduced to a bit role, Mascis unleashing his armada of amps with nary an ounce of restraint. It wasn't until "Thumb" that the trio truly galvanized the crowd. The longtime live Dinosaur staple created a head-bobbing vortex behind the almighty fat, chunky riff, delivered with extra trimmings by Amherst's finest. A Green Mind medley of "Blowing It" and "I Live for That Look" paved the way for Watt, who whipped the crowd into a frenzy with a fiery rendition of the Stooges' "TV Eye." The encore found Mascis with a sample-loaded keyboard draped over his neck above the guitar. The result was "More Light," a pitch-shifty maelstrom of fuzz, which flowed into "Just Like Heaven," in which Watt took "YOU!" to a new roaring level, and Mascis' wailing solo rendered the original's feeble piano fill obsolete. The vintage closer "Freak Scene" conjured up images of the wild, rafter-hanging crowd-surfing madness of ye(SST)eryear, but that was another time, another place. When Dinosaur walked the earth.