J Mascis is best known as lead singer and guitarist of Dinosaur Jr. Their trademark sound, embodied by 1998 single, Freak Scene, is Neil Young meets grunge. He's fifty this year and has been working as J Mascis since 1999. In 2008 the original Dinosaur Jr reformed but he's persisted with a solo, semi- acoustic act, that lays even more emphasis on his melodic barotone. Tied To A Star recently followed 2011's fine Several Shades of Why. Tonight's sold out show seemed unlikely to demonstrate why he was rated 86th in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 greatest guitarists of all time. How wrong can you be? His long hair may be all grey but his acoustic guitar combines with multiple effect pedals to create an incredibly rich sound. At times it buries the vocal, especially on the opener, Listen To Me. The Pixies are credited with inventing loud quiet loud but Mascis has an equal claim, mixing pretty guitar accompanied by falsetto with loud, frenetic, feedback soaked grunge, where he sounds like a one man Crazy Horse (Young's classic backing band). New songs like Heal The Star, Every Morning and Stumble feature heavily, but don't dominate tonight's set. That's a role taken by Dinosaur Jr numbers. Get Me, halfway through, is probably the best five minutes of the night. Out There is splendid. Pond Life and Little Fury Things feature, and the 68 minute main set concludes with the epic Alone. You'd never believe a man could get so much noise out of one guitar. He hardly speaks, apart from an 'all right, all right' to calm us down after Get Me and 'here's a cover you may know' before Mazzy Star's Fade Into You. He returns for an all too brief encore of The Cure's Just Like Heaven. Glorious.
