Dinosaur Jr. frontman J Mascis is known as something of a slacker guitar god. He stands stoically onstage, barely moving, as he seemingly effortlessly works through deft guitar solos and lopsided riffs. Unfortunately, Mascis has developed a similar reputation as an interview subject, quietly sitting and offering deft nonanswers.
That’s not to say that Mascis can’t be funny or charming. As our interview was winding down and I was thanking him for his time, he started to loosen up a bit. He told me about his youth as a mini golf “enthusiast.” “I had a 3-foot putt for the win” at a mini-golf tournament, he said, but “that’s when I realized that I was a choker … When I was 11, I choked.” And that’s when he decided, “I should maybe not do sports.” So, instead of becoming a professional mini golfer, Mascis went on to form one of the most important bands in alternative rock.
While most of his contemporaries have called it quits or are just going through the motions onstage for a paycheck, the original lineup of Mascis, bassist Lou Barlow, and drummer Patrick Murphy are still regularly putting out new LPs of reliable rockers. But Mascis says there isn’t any grand secret to the band’s longevity. Over 40 years deep, he says, “I guess we have nothing better to do.”
What, for an interviewer, can come off as frustrating indifference might actually be the key to Mascis’ staying power — for better or worse. Creatively and professionally, his modus operandi seems to be rolling with the punches and not overthinking things.
For the new record There Near, he said, the band “just didn’t push it.” There were no eight-hour marathon studio sessions. They weren’t meticulously fine-tuning basslines or trading Logic sessions back and forth remotely. Mascis would roll in with fully prepared demos and the band would immediately start recording, even as Barlow and Murph were still learning their parts, “on the off chance that it comes together quickly.”
The same sort of relaxed approach also informs Mascis’ gear choices. He said, “I am kind of a tube purist guy, but it’s just also kind of inconvenient sometimes,” so he uses whatever works. That means while he mixes and masters to tape, he’s also tracking in Pro Tools.
When it comes to designing signature instruments with Fender, he’s just as easygoing. “I try to, you know, do the important things that I want, but not make it too complicated … I think it’s better to keep it kind of cheap … just so people can do what they want with it.” The neck is his biggest concern, he said. “I’m a sucker for jumbo frets and, you know, if the neck is good and the frets and stuff, that’s the main thing. Most of the other stuff, you know, you can swap out if you want.”
But that somewhat lackadaisical attitude has also caught him some heat. Two years ago, Mascis released a video for his solo track “Old Friends” that was made using generative AI. Speaking with The Verge, he finally publicly addressed the controversy. “Yeah, just some kid did it,” he said. “I thought it looked cool, so… Yeah, that’s dipping my toes into the… I don’t do much with videos.” He trailed off repeatedly while answering before finally admitting, “But yeah, I guess that’s a slippery slope.”
Similarly, he said that while he doesn’t believe there is a place for AI in music making, we have to acknowledge that it’s here whether we like it or not, and “I guess we’re learning how to deal with it. And hopefully it won’t kill us all.”
About the only thing that Mascis could muster strong feelings about was the band’s infamously loud live shows. (Dinosaur Jr.’s recent performance at the tiny Baby’s All Right is what finally convinced me to start packing earplugs.) “I noticed the audience too seems more desperate for something kind of reality-based,” he said, letting a touch of his purist heart show. “We don’t have in-ear monitors or click tracks. We have amps and you know, just, I think some people are responding to the reality of it. Like they really need something that’s not, you know, computer-generated or something.”
He bemoaned the lack of amps onstage (Mascis plays in front of three full stacks, even in a 280-person-capacity club) and the reliance on high-tech front-of-house setups. “It’s very weird. Now, soundmen create the sound instead of capture the sound,” he said. Of course, his recognition of the visceral power of live music and directly connecting with an audience makes his indifference to AI all the more baffling.
Dinosaur Jr. are currently touring the US behind There Near, which is out now.
