They've been around a while, but they're not Dinosaurs yet
It's about twenty years since the last Dinosaur Jr. gig, so it should be an interesting affair. The singer looks like an extra for a LOTR movie, the music sounds rather like Nirvana, and he sounds like Kurt Cobain. As with Nirvana, there's a definite chilled out vibe running through the whole set, and it's not a surprise that it's grungy given that they're part of the old school. That grungy feel also means that the despairing, forlorn edge to the vocals and music is there.
Bizarrely enough, the Nirvana sound disappears for the second song, as metal takes over instead. It's still all good though, and pretty enjoyable - well, I'm not complaining really. It's around the third song that the vocals start annoying me because they're just too weak for this metal-cum-grunge mix up. A pity really, because the guitarist would have been perfect vocally.
For the rest of the set, the band alternate between grunge, indie, and metal with very much mixed results. There's the good - the fourth song is rather different from the rest of the set, with a loud-quiet-loud structure being thrown about, and an unnerving riff from the depths. The seventh song of the set, too, is so melancholy and lovely it makes me want to cry. There's the average - unfortunately this comprises a lot of the rest of the set. And there's the downright uninteresting - a chugging riff turns to an indie-rock-metal mess up, that could have done with not having been in the set.
There isn't much in the way of crowd participation either, but that's perhaps unsurprising for a reunion gig. All in all, they were pretty tight and the crowd liked them despite the way the set meandered.