Back in stock, the latest vinyl version of Dinosaur Jr's 1988 album Bug that came out on Jagjaguwar. Here's my old writeup for the album from when we stocked the previous vinyl release:

Seeing indie rock legends Dinosaur Jr appearing on our shelves alongside all of the extreme noise tapes and experimental black metal releases that we stock might seem incongrous, but these guys are still one of my personal favorite bands, not to mention one of the most influential outfits to come out of the American post-hardcore underground of the 1980s. And their first three albums, recorded with the original lineup of J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph, total a singular body of work that's well-loved by those who like their rock tempered by unhealthy amounts of noise. That classic trio of albums (Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me, Bug) started off with the band dragging themselves up out of the blitzkrieg hardcore thrash of their previous projects (which included Deep Wound, J and Lou's teenage thrash band that would end up becoming an indirect influence on the nascent grindcore scene) and culminated in some of the loudest and most powerful guitar rock of the decade. After Barlow's departure following Bug, the band would essentially turn into a Mascis solo project and ascend to small-scale MTV stardom in the era of 120 Minutes, producing some truly great albums; but nothing ever came close to the white-hot, distorted fury of those early records and their brilliant fusion of heartfelt melody, avant-noise distortion, overdriven metallic crunch, and 70s rock-refracted punk.

Depending on what kind of day I'm having, Dinosaur Jr's 1988 album Bug could be my favorite of all their early stuff. It's definite a feast of "hits" from the group. The third and final Lp from the original lineup of the band, Bug was forged at the peak of Dinosaur Jr's inter-personal dysfunction, which resulted in Barlow being booted from the band but which arguably was also the fire in which these amazing songs could be forged. By this point, the band's weird fusion of influences (underground heavy metal, Neil Young, gloomy British post-punk) had fully congealed, and produced what could be the considered the most accessible album of that era. It starts off with "Freak Scene", their classic anthem of alt-rock slackerdom, a perfect opener, and the songs that follow are just as brilliant. Blown-out, noisy pop hooks and massively distorted riffs, Mascis's jangling major key chords blowing up into squalls of nutzoid guitar shred and walls of sludgy noise, tracks like "No Bones" sounding like some heartsick Crazy Horse tune before it suddenly kicks into that crushing distortion at the end. There's the metallic crunch that surrounds "They Always Come", the bittersweet, galloping power of "Yeah We Know", the infectious, thrashing jubilation of "Budge", and the wistful folkiness of "Pond Song". All great. Mascis cranks his wah-pedal into overdrive with great frequency, splattering the album with a nearly non-stop barrage of soaring, stunning solos and melodies, backed by the utterly pummeling power of the rhythm section, and they deliver one of the heaviest Dinosaur songs ever with "The Post", perfectly melding a sludgy, stomping metallic dirge with deliriously thunderous pop. This stuff was darker and more brooding than the previous album, too, and all of that invasively catchy rock built up to a shrieking sludge-encrusted dirge called "Don't" that comes out of nowhere at the end, a total pallette cleanse as Lou screams "why don't you like me" ad nauseum over a blasting, bludgeoning noise rock meltdown.