Track Listing

1. Out There
2. Start Choppin'
3. What Else Is New
4. On The Way
5. Not The Same
6. Get Me
7. Drawerings
8. Hide
9. Goin' Home
10. I Ain't Sayin'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139160 in Music
• Released on: 1993-02-01
• Number of discs: 1

From Amazon.com
With Paul Westerberg's croon and the slacker guitar of a Neil Young, J Mascis is forever assured of critical huzzahs. "Out There" and "Not the Same" are loud, lazy rock & roll, American-style. --Jeff Bateman

CD Description
Dinosaur Jr.'s baroque moment finds J. Mascis bringing in astring section and adding the occasional odd instrument himself to his band's power-trio splatter. But if Mascis is theNeil Young of the post-hard-core generation, that doesn't make WHERE YOU BEEN his HARVEST. Au contraire, it's still loaded with feedback squalls, distorted guitar solos and all other manner of electric melancholy. It does make WHERE YOU BEEN his most integrated pop moment, tipping the overall balance away from the sprawling noise and toward pop structure, offering some moments of sub-orchestral beauty.
"What ElseIs New", a melodic rocker with its share of blues guitar leads, has a surprising two-minute coda that builds on a strummed acoustic guitar with a cello, then tympani, then a full string section. "Not The Same" is a ballad that seamlessly integrates those same elements with a gorgeously arpeggiated electric guitar motif, and a Young-like falsetto vocal.

Customer Reviews

Sit back and slack
Dinosaur Jr reside with Husker Du and Throwing Muses as truly seminal to the american alternative rock scene. With bands such as Nirvana citing Dinosaur as influences it isn't hard to see that a great deal of american alternative rock owes a great deal to this band. Where You Been is seen by many to be the quintessential Jr album blending folk, rock and ironic content to produce a brilliant album. The lazy drawl of leading light J Mascis is perfectly set off against guitar work that is both technically impressive and aurally astounding.

It is hard to believe that a band whose whole premise is slacking and making rock to slack to could bring forth classics like Out There and Start Choppin, few bands can ever sound as majestic as Dinosaur Jr at the peak of a guitar solo.

The only unfortunate aspect is that their stuff is so hard to get, Where You Been is a good starting point, but Bug, Green Mind and You're Living All Over Me should not be overlooked, or indeed J Mascis' solo album with The Fog (more light).

To summarise, I'd like to give you a track by track review, but I can't its all good, yes all of it. Buy it, play it, sit back and order pizza.

great stuff
this is a very good record. best described as "squeely american alt rock" this album is a hiding place for some cracking pop rock nuggets. ok it does contain one or two long, drawn out bore fests, but heck most albums do...

Grungetastic
Truly, J Mascis is the spiritual heir to Neil Young. After a few OK-ish albums around the turn of the 90's (Bug, Green Mind et al), this one plays to Dinosaur Jr's main strength: Mascis' astounding guitar-playing. The fact that it's employed in the service of some decent songs helps as well.

Out There sets the scene from the start: a crunching overdriven guitar riff, some squealy soloing, and then Mascis' half-asleep drawl surfing over the top of a vast wave of noise. Start Choppin follows - hard to imagine this, with its weird falsetto bits and staccato-guitar-riff-as-chorus structure, being a top 20 single today (as it was in 1993). Most of the album continues in similar vein, with the exception of Not The Same with its queasy falsetto vocal and strange chiming gothic rumble. The guitar solo which concludes Get Me qualifies as my personal album highlight.

The follow-up album (Without A Sound) dabbled with some country-rock stylings (not entirely convincingly); since then Mascis seems to have joined My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields in the Great Lost Guitar Heroes Of The 1990's file. Maybe they should collaborate on a comeback album. Now that'd give The Strokes something to think about.....