Elastic Days
When he’s not fronting revived rock rippers Dinosaur Jr., J Mascis maintains a solo career making quieter, acoustic guitar-based tunes. On his third solo album, written and recorded at his Bisquiteen home studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, Mascis—along with guests such as singer-songwriter Mark Mulcahy (Miracle Legion) and Luluc’s Zoë Randell—further mines lower-key musical moments. Mascis tells Apple Music about the benefits of home recording, taking care of his singing voice, and incorporating new instruments into his sound. **There was a 15-year gap in between your first and second solo records, but now you release albums pretty frequently. What happened?** *Martin + Me* was a live album of me trying out playing acoustic that I recorded \[in 1996\]. Megan, who runs Sub Pop, is a friend of mine and she always wanted me to do an acoustic album after that. I finally got around to it, so now if there’s someone who wants to release another album, I fit it in when I can. **Are there benefits to recording in your own home studio?** Yeah, I was in New York one day in the mid- to late ’90s, staring out a window in a studio, and it wasn’t a great view—just a courtyard in the back of a building. I kept thinking, “I’m spending $1,000 to stare out this window.” It was a paralyzing thought I never got over. **When did you start focusing more on taking care of your singing voice?** When the Dino reunion started, I was having a lot of trouble singing. I seemed to be sick all the time, and I couldn’t hit a lot of notes. I had a vocal lesson while I was on the first tour in San Francisco. \[The teacher\] gave me a CD to warm up, and since then doing that really helped. I started to hit all the notes and stuff. **When you’re writing songs, is there anything that causes you to separate solo songs from Dinosaur Jr songs?** I’m usually writing for a specific record, so I’m writing with that in mind and I come up with some riff that seems more Dino than what I’m doing if I’m trying to write a solo record. I try to file the song away if it doesn’t fit in with the vibe I’m going for at the time. **Your favorite song on the album is “See You at the Movies.” Why?** I don’t know—I just liked it better than the other ones. **Have you noticed any changes in yourself or your work since that first album?** Oh jeez, I’m sure, but it’s hard to remember how I’ve changed. That’s a better question for someone else.
Near the end of Reagan's first term, the Western Massachusetts Hardcore scene coughed up an insanely shaped chunk called Dinosaur. Comprised of WMHC vets, the trio was a miasmic tornado of guitar noise, bad attitude and near-subliminal pop-based-shape-shifting. Through their existence, Dinosaur (amended to Dinosaur Jr. for legal reasons) defined a very specific, very aggressive set of oblique song-based responses to what was going on. Their one constant was the scalp-fryingly loud guitar and deeply buried vocals of J Mascis. A couple of years before they ended their reign, J cut a solo album called Martin + Me. Recorded live and acoustic, the record allowed the bones of J's songs to be totally visible for the first time. Fans were surprised to hear how melodically elegant these compositions were, even if J still seemed interested in swallowing some of the words that most folks would have sung. Since then, through the reformation of the original Dinosaur Jr lineup in 2005, J has recorded solo albums now and then. And those album, Sings + Chant for AMMA (2005), Several Shades of Why (2011) and Tied to a Star (2014) had all delivered incredible sets of songs presented with a minimum of bombast and a surfeit of cool. Like its predecessors, Elastic Days was recorded at J's own Bisquiteen studio. Mascis does almost all his own stunts, although Ken Miauri (who also appeared on Tied to a Star) plays keyboards and there are a few guest vocal spots. These include old mates Pall Jenkins (Black Heart Procession), and Mark Mulcahy (Miracle Legion, etc.), as well as the newly added voice of Zoë Randell (Luluc) among others. But the show is mostly J's and J's alone. He laughs when I tell him I'm surprised by how melodic his vocals seem to have gotten. Asked if that was intentional, he says, “No. I took some singing lessons and do vocal warm-ups now, but that was mostly just to keep from blowing out my vocal cords when Dino started touring again. The biggest difference with this record might have to do with the drums. I'd just got a new drum set I was really excited about. I don't have too many drum outlets at the moment, so I played a lot more drums than I'd originally planned. I just kept playing. [laughs] I'd play the acoustic guitar parts then head right to the drums.” There is plenty of drumming on the dozen songs on Elastic Days. But for those expecting the hallucinatory overload of Dinosaur Jr's live attack, the gentleness of the approach here will draw easy comparisons to Neil Young's binary approach to working solo versus working with Crazy Horse. This is a lazy man's shorthand, but it still rings true. Elastic Days brims with great moments. Epic hooks that snare you in surprisingly subtle ways, guitar textures that slide against each other like old lovers, and structures that range from a neo-power-ballad (“Web So Dense”) to jazzily-canted West Coasty post-psych (“Give It Off”) to a track that subliminally recalls the keyboard approach of Scott Thurston-era Stooges (“Drop Me”). The album plays out with a combination of holism and variety that is certain to set many brains ablaze. J says he'll be taking this album on the road later in the year. He'll be playing by himself, but unlike other solo tours he says he'll be standing up this time. “I used to just sit down and build a little fort around myself -- amps, music stands, drinks stands, all that stuff. But I just realized it sounds better if the amps are higher up because I'm so used to playing with stacks. So I'll stand this time.” I ask if it's not pretty weird to stand alone on a big stage. “Yeah,” he says. “But it's weird sitting down too.” Ha. Good point. One needs to be elastic. In all things. --Byron Coley
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The "acoustic" album, more often than not, is a risky move. Yet, on J Mascis' latest solo, "acoustic" album, Elastic Days, the immortal indie shredder regresses into a catastrophically vulnerable state of mind.
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Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis leaves the Big Muff pedals at home for his quietly nostalgic new acoustic album 'Elastic days' on Sub Pop.
J Mascis shows a different tone to his writing without offering anything that we haven't heard before in our review of the bare 'Elastic Days;
The wizard of introspection completely fails to peak, and that's the magic. CD New Music review by Joe Muggs