Ear-Bleeding Country: The Best of Dinosaur Jr

Ear-Bleeding Country: The Best of Dinosaur Jr
Customer Review: Patience will pay!
If you haven’t heard a lot by Dinosaur Jr but think you might like them, then this is an excellent place to start: and I speak through experience.

A 10″ copy of “Start Choppin’” (which jumps like hell at the end) is all that had kept me going for the ten years prior to buying this album. To be able to listen to “Start Choppin’” in the car without the guitar riff at the end jumping over and over would have been good enough in itself, but over twelve months on, here I am, still listening to it on a regular basis (not to mention other albums of theirs).

“Start Choppin’” aside, the only other song I’d ever heard, “Feel the Pain”, was one of the songs I initially listened to, and also “Take a Run at the Sun”, “I Don’t Think So” and their cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven”. Now call me a pansy, but there must be other people Out There (forgive me!) who think that this song would be even better without the god-awful “NOOOOO!!!” and abrupt ending? No?

I now think some of these songs are relatively poor compared to other stuff on the album: “I Don’t Think So” is pretty mediocre, and I would agree with other reviewers who think that “Take a Run…” doesn’t belong here. Even “Feel the Pain”, which another reviewer thinks is their second best song ever, I rarely listen to now, but perhaps that owes more to what comes after it…

After the initial phase then, I found myself listening to the early songs, particularly the first four (”Budge” has never really done anything for me).P>”Wagon”, “Thumb”, “Whatever’s Cool With Me” and “Not You Again” are all good songs from the middle of the band’s life, but it’s the songs from “Where You Been” that ultimately made me want to go out and buy more of their rather hard-to-come-by albums (I had to get “Where You Been” on here).

Sandwiched between the only two songs I’d heard of, “Get Me” had been one of the songs that I initially found myself listening to, and I liked it a lot. But it took me the best part of a year to realise that, with “Out There” (which also took a bit of time, and is also from “Where You Been”) it is the best song on here. I never thought that I’d ever get so excited by guitars again: after crooning to the first three minutes of “Get Me” (”You’re not going to get me through this are youuuuu ooh-oooooooooohhh?”), you expect the song to play out, but J comes in with another quick verse and a two minute guitar riff, which is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.

This album may be a little patchy (with the emphasis on the word “little”), and existing fans of the band will no doubt quibble over the track-listing and wonder “what’s the point?”, but this album changed my life for the better.

Five stars it is then.

Customer Review: Ear bleedin’ Brilliant!
While i agree with most of the points raised by Alan in the above review,you have to accept that everybody’s version of a “best of” will be very different.I think this is an excellent introduction to a Dinosaur Jr novice and although,as Alan pointed out,the early years are
skimmed over in favour of inclusions such as “Take A Run At The Sun” and “Where’d you Go”,
these are minor gripes.The sheer quality of the
bands output guarantees that any compilation will
be stunning.And where i disagree strongly with
Alan is in his dismissal of “Without A Sound” which is one of my favourite Dinosaur Jr albums
by far.I feel their last effort “Hand It Over” was terribly weak by comparison.But hey,never mind all that…if you are vaguely familiar with
this band and want to expand your knowledge,this is a great place to start.And you will eventually
get around to the rest of the albums.

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