Dinosaur Jr. announce 'There Near,' their first album in five years, out August 28

Dinosaur Jr. will release There Near, their first album in five years, on August 28 through Jagjaguwar. J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph announced it on June 30 with the lead single "Several Got Away" and a fall North American tour, and the way Mascis built the record is the most interesting thing about it.

He went looking for 1985. There Near was cut over roughly a year at Bisquiteen Studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, the band's hometown, and Mascis played a lot of it through a 1970s Mesa Boogie MK I, the same amp engineer Chris Dixon used when the trio recorded their debut Dinosaur forty years ago. Mascis put it plainly in the announcement: "You always hear how Rick Rubin always makes bands he's producing sit down and listen to their first album and say let's get back to that sound. So I just gave myself his advice." That is a producer's trick performed without the producer, and on the evidence of the single it mostly works.

"Several Got Away" is Dinosaur Jr. doing the thing only Dinosaur Jr. does: a bright, almost sunny melody that Mascis keeps shoving under a wall of fuzz, sung in that half-asleep drawl that has never once tried to sell you anything. The structure is standard-issue and that is the point. Verse, chorus, then Mascis tears off a squealing solo after the bridge that runs longer than it strictly needs to before the song folds back into the hook. Guy Kozak directed the video. Nobody is reinventing the band here. They are re-pressurizing it.

For anyone counting, There Near is the band's 13th album and their sixth since the classic lineup reformed in 2005, following 2021's Sweep It Into Space. The reunion records have been remarkably level, which is either the knock on this era or the whole appeal depending on your patience for consistency. Mascis, Barlow and Murph have now been a functioning band longer the second time around than they were the first, and they have stopped trying to prove anything by it. Ken Mauri adds keys, as he has on the recent run. The eleven tracks carry titles that read like Mascis shrugs: "No Friends," "Read The Room," "Clam Along," "No One's Ready."

The touring is split in two. Through the summer the band is out on co-headlining dates with Band of Horses that run to August 1. The album's own run, with Stef Chura opening, starts October 9 at Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas and works west and south, hitting Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Dallas and Austin before closing November 7 at Tipitina's in New Orleans. Tickets are on sale through Ticketmaster and the band's site.

There Near tracklist

1. Several Got Away
2. No Friends
3. Everything At Once
4. Take Me With You
5. Blowin' Up
6. Gone Off
7. Clam Along
8. Walk Me Back
9. Read The Room
10. Put It Down
11. No One's Ready