Dinosaur Jr, Band of Horses - Neumo’s

So, last night’s concert by indie rock elders Dinosaur Jr and rising stars Band of Horses was one of those cigarette company-produced affairs with free tickets (for some) and garish, tacky, overwhelming advertising for all. There were banners, illuminated logos, and projections everywhere. There were human spammers all over the venue shilling smokes and taking names. But, whatever, fine, I got in for free, right? Fair trade. But what about the 150 or so people who paid $20 a pop to be bombarded with all that shit?

Band of Horses played 11 songs, including old favorites “Wicked Gil,” “Our Swords,” “The Great Salt Lake,” new Wal*Mart anthem “The Funeral,” new single “Is There a Ghost,” a handful of other songs from the forthcoming Cease To Begin, and a cover of Them Two’s “Am I a Good Man.” The band performed as a six piece, and they sounded loud and triumphant as all hell, lending their already surging choruses even more power and (for better or worse) buffing up the band’s more trembling, quiet moments. I’d like to ID all the new songs, but I haven’t been able to stream the new album yet, so. I can say that out of all the new songs, only “Is There a Ghost” comes close to the epic pop moments Everything All The Time. The rest of the material sounds more “Southern” or country, more mellow jam, less tremendous indie pop. “Is There a Ghost” will be everywhere this fall, just watch, and that’s great—it’s a spine-tingling good song—but I’m still not sure about the rest of the record.

Dinosaur Jr were fucking loud! Well, loud/quiet/loud, really. But the loud parts, yikes! This may discredit me to admit, but I never really got into Dinosaur. I’m 27, my first exposure to them was that awesome Spike Jonze-directed golfing video for the sublime “Feel the Pain,” and that was about as deep as my relationship with the band ever got. For some reason, I got way more into Sebadoh and Folk Implosion (the reason for the latter would be “Natural One,” I guess) than I did Dinosaur. So there was no specific nostalgia for me, no idea which songs were the important ones, which were new, etc. But there was a kind of general nostalgia for the mumbled vocals, the violent, vestigial guitar solos that persisted in indie rock before the advent of “grunge“‘s anti-virtuoso riffs, and that loud/quiet/loud dynamic. The band suffered some brief technical difficulties, fielded some complaints about inaudible vocals, but mostly just shredded like a bunch of alternately spastic and autistic kids. They looked truly happy to be up there on stage together.