Photo of J Mascis by Laura Jerele
I gotta say, doubling up on a bill and giving us both Dinosaur Jr. and Band of Horses in one night is one helluva of a good idea! Last night’s show had both bands playing about an hour and a half each, and both digging into a classic album from their own catalog to celebrate. Dinosaur Jr. running through Where You Been front to back, Band of Horses doing the same with Everything All the Time. Two albums, two very different flavors of loud (and I do mean LOUD) and a crowd that clearly came ready for the intersection both.
Dinosaur Jr. is one of those bands where you can say, man, I’ve been listening to them for what feels like forever! They’ve got longevity and still have mass appeal to the younger crowd because people were pushed up close to the stage the second the doors opened. That’s right, this wasn’t just a Gen X throwback night: kids were out in full force to see these bands and they filled The Factory rightly!
Still with three original members—J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and their drummer that goes by ‘Murph’—they walked out like it was old hat and no big deal. And then they started playing at mass volume, and I was soooo happy to have my earplugs in considering I was photographing right in front of a wall of Marshalls! It was genuinely cool to watch these guys still do this at full volume, all these years later, with so much ease and power. Glittery guitars, drums getting absolutely hammered, and Marshalls with tolex so torn up and beat to hell they looked like they’d survived a war, it all works. Barlow’s energy on bass was borderline impossible to contain, bouncing and lunging around the stage despite the fact that he was playing the whole set in socks. All three of them played and sounded great, especially Mascis, whose voice has always sounded like it belonged to someone twice his age, and somehow it still sounds exactly the same today as it did decades ago. They also threw in their cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” which caught a chunk of the crowd off guard! I think a lot of people forgot, or maybe never even knew, that they’d covered that song years back. Didn’t matter. It went over great.
Then Band of Horses came out, and if you have any preconceived notion that this band is subtle or quiet, you need to ditch that notion, because they rock really freaking hard live. They have volume and power with how hard they play, sing, and perform. There is nothing sedate about this band on a stage. They have always sounded so damn good every time I’ve seem them live (including their acoustic/electric show in 2024), and last night was no exception. Their light show was absolutely wonderful too, with bright and huge colors when the songs called for it, moody and low when they needed to pull back, and all of it landing with the same powerful punch their music has.
You could tell these guys are having an absolute blast up there. Sure, they’ve got the radio hits, but watching them live on deep album cuts makes it obvious there’s a lot more to this band than just that. You kind of have to see it in person to really get it. There is nothing basic about Band of Horses, and their huge hit “Funeral” proves that with how much emotion they put into it—and how much emotion they pull out of us with it. It fell early in the set and hit hard, it was perfect. And later when they played “In A Drawer,” they brought out Mascis, who recorded the song with them. So great to see this played live as it should be!
Such a stellar bill and awesome pairing, really happy this tour hit our city! | Laura Jerele
Dinosaur Jr setlist
Out There
Start Choppin
What Else Is New
On the Way
Not the Same
Get Me
Drawerings
Goin’ Home
I Ain’t Sayin’
Garden
Several Got Away
Just Like Heaven
Feel the Pain
Band of Horses setlist
The First Song
Wicked Gil
Our Swords
The Funeral
Part One
The Great Salt Lake
Weed Party
I Go to the Barn
Monsters
St. Augustine
Crutch
In a Drawer
Laredo
Little Suspect
No One’s Gonna Love You
Ode to LRC
