Dinosaur Jr.

You're Living All Over Me (1987)

Dinosaur Jr. made the record that established J Mascis's guitar sound as a singular force in American rock — massive, distorted, melodically articulate even at full volume, owing equal debts to Neil Young and to heavy metal while belonging entirely to neither. 'Little Fury Things' is a compact hook-driven piece demonstrating Mascis's ability to write a pop song inside a noise framework; 'The Lung' is a sprawling showcase where the lead line is simultaneously a riff, a solo, and a melody. The record invented the template for 1990s lo-fi indie guitar rock, a lineage running through Pavement, Sebadoh, and Guided by Voices.

Sleeve notes

You're Living All Over Me · 1987

J Mascis has one of the most distinctive sensibilities in rock: melodic instincts that are genuinely affecting — the kind of simple, direct hooks that seem to have been waiting to exist — delivered through walls of guitar so loud that they constitute their own genre. You're Living All Over Me (1987) and Bug (1988) are two of the most fully realized records in American independent music, built on the productive gap between Mascis's hushed, exhausted vocal and the physical assault of the guitars behind it.

Mascis's guitar solos, which go on for as long as they need to, have been called self-indulgent by critics who have apparently never asked whether self-indulgence might be the point. His relationship with Lou Barlow — bassist on the early records, fired in 1989, eventually reconciled — generated as much heat and complexity as the music. The reunion lineup, which made Farm (2009) and Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not (2016), found both the strengths and the limits of what the Dinosaur Jr. model can be.