Description

Dinosaur Jr. – There Near – Clear Pink Vinyl Record

There Near continues the unusually productive second life of Dinosaur Jr.’s original lineup. Released in 2026, five years after Sweep It Into Space, it is the sixth studio album J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph have made since reuniting. By this point the reunion is a substantial body of work in its own right. The eleven songs draw on the same combustible relationship between melodic writing and overwhelming guitar sound that first defined the trio, while showing how comfortably those musicians now inhabit their shared language.

The album took shape in short recording stretches over roughly a year at Mascis’s Bisquiteen studio in Amherst. That setting keeps the sessions close to the guitarist’s working environment, where a song can develop around the particular sound and feel of an instrument. One notable addition was a seventies Mesa/Boogie Mark I amplifier, a model connected to the sound of the band’s first album. It supplies a concrete link to Dinosaur Jr.’s beginnings without making There Near a retrospective project or a re-recording of older material.

Mascis’s guitar remains central, but the trio’s identity depends on more than its volume. Barlow’s bass can give the arrangements a competing melodic line or push against the guitar’s weight, while Murph turns those tensions into a physical pulse. Ken Mauri’s piano and organ add another set of colors around the core band. The combination leaves room for the familiar contrast between Mascis’s reserved vocal delivery and the more expansive emotional language of his playing, a contrast that has long made the group’s songs feel both guarded and exposed.

Barlow contributes “Blowin’ Up” and “No One’s Ready,” continuing the exchange of songwriting voices that runs through the reunited band’s catalog. Placing the latter at the end of the album gives his perspective the final word. Across the rest of the program, titles such as “No Friends,” “Take Me with You,” and “Walk Me Back” sit within a set built from concise songs rather than a single long-form concept. The recording’s continuity comes from the musicians’ interplay and the character of the writing.

This clear pink vinyl edition presents the full eleven-track album. There Near belongs alongside the later Dinosaur Jr. records as evidence that the original lineup’s reunion became an ongoing creative partnership. It also maintains an audible relationship with the band’s earliest work through its instrumentation and approach to guitar sound. The attraction is that combination of continuity and active songwriting: three musicians returning to a recognizable set of tools, with another album’s worth of reasons to put them to work.

Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic