After recording a handful of acoustic albums, J Mascis brings his electric guitars back for a hang on What Do We Do Now.
BY RICHARD BIENSTOCK
WHEN J MASCIS HUNKEREDdown at his own Bisquiteen Studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, to begin work on his new and fourth studio solo album, it was with the intention of approaching it much like he had the previous three — as a largely acoustic affair, with unplugged guitars functioning as the primary support to his lead vocals.
But something happened during the making of what became his latest release, What Do We Do Now (Sub Pop): Mascis found himself, as usual, strumming plenty of acoustics, but he also added drums, keys, pedal steel and electric guitars — lots of electric guitars, in fact.
What sparked the change? As Mascis explains in his characteristically blunt manner, nothing, really. “I was trying to do just acoustic,” he says over Zoom late one afternoon, “but then I just started playing drums.” When it came to guitar solos, he continues, “I felt like I’d exhausted playing leads on acoustic on the other albums, so I didn’t even bother. Instead, I did them on electric.”
What resulted is an album that splits the difference between the more intimate approach Mascis has explored in his solo work since the release of his first effort under his own name, 2011’s Several Shades of Why, and the hard-rocking, gloriously guitar-noodle-y music he’s been crafting on and off for 40 years with alt-rock icons Dinosaur Jr. Songs like “It’s True,” “Old Friends” and the first single, “Can’t Believe We’re Here,” unspool on crisply strummed beds of acoustics, but are punctuated by the sort of howling, Neil Young–ish lead guitar excursions that have made the 58-year-old Mascis a guitar hero not only to generations of rock fans but also peers: Henry Rollins has a comedy bit in his spoken-word shows about Mascis’s iconic (and notoriously oddball) nature, while artists ranging from Warren Haynes and Jason Isbell to Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and the Breeders’ Kim Deal recently joined him onstage in Brooklyn to help bash through various Dinosaur Jr. classics.
Furthermore, Mascis’s distinctive lead playing, in which loopy bursts of pentatonic runs are punctuated by feral squeals, wigged-out note bends and wild whammy-bar work, arguably is communicated more clearly on What Do We Do Now due to the fact that the rhythm beds behind it are less noisy and distorted than in Dinosaur Jr.
Even so, Mascis says he didn’t change up how he construc
