On his newest solo album Tied to a Star, J Mascis delivers essentially what you'd expect from a veteran rocker softening with age: folky jams, lots of acoustic guitar with delicate accompaniment and a few famous friends. But the thing is, he's actually not softening, considering the notoriously punishing stage volume of his pioneering proto-grunge outfit Dinosaur Jr., with whom he still tours and records along with a handful of other very loud side-projects. Still, when Mascis decidedly hushes up for a second record of entirely quiet jams, it's the first thing most are going to mention.
It's also the first thing mentioned in a phone interview with the tight-lipped, verbally minimal Mascis, a man who's mostly let his records do the talking. Mascis is famous for giving interviewers an awkward run for their money.
"It's a totally different feeling, I guess," Mascis, in his distinctly raspy mumble, tells the Scene in regard to going acoustic. He fills this sentence with pregnant pauses lasting about 60 seconds and sounding equal parts confused and amused. "It's somehow depressing to play acoustic guitar ... not as fun. So I guess it brings out more depressing songs or something."
Nevertheless, the man is on point. Mascis' second official solo album — available now via Sub Pop Records — is chock-full of catchy bummer-wave gems. Even the album's upbeat and contagious single "Every Morning" is about grappling with the woes of getting out of bed. Building on 2011's more sparsely arranged Several Shades of Why, Mascis employs the help of a backing band containing the likes of Pall Jenkins of The Black Heart Procession and Mark Mulcahy, frontman for the reunited made-for-TV band Polaris from Nickelodeon's cult classic The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Guest vocalist Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) chimes in on the whispery duet "Wide Awake."
While he's best known has Dinosaur Jr.'s centrifugal nucleus, playing with other great musicians is something Mascis does a lot. Over the past few years, he's been drumming with stoner-rock troupe Witch (whose frontman, Kyle "King Tuff" Thomas, is coincidentally also playing Nashville Oct. 1, over at Mercy Lounge; see the Critic's Pick on p. 32), playing guitar, drums and singing with power-pop supergroup Sweet Apple, recording synth-pop covers of Dinosaur Jr. songs with Built to Spill's Brett Nelson, and lending his signature shred to psych-blues instrumentalists Heavy Blanket. Why is he in so many bands?
"I get bored and, you know, try and make something happen," Mascis explains slowly, carefully, almost as if he resents having to ponder it. "It's just either like friends or someone I think is really good. Or competition, or both."
That said, with so many projects on his plate, what itch is Mascis' solo stuff scratching that isn't satisfied by all those other bands? Considering the fact that the bulk of Dinosaur Jr.'s '90s output was essentially solo records — Mascis played almost every instrument on every major label album aside from 1993's Where You Been. And now with his post-Dino band J Mascis + the Fog more or less out of commission, Mascis confirms it's that previously unlimited control that's responsible for this new trend of "J Mascis" records.
"I'm writing and I'm thinking about, you know, what kind of mood I want to convey. Or something. I dunno. With a Dino record I'm thinking about what Murph or Lou can play, or maybe what it would sound like or something. [With solo material] I don't have those thoughts."
And there you have it: J Mascis makes solo records so he can write sad songs on acoustic guitar he can play by himself. When asked which of those projects he'll be working on next, he sums it up with a phrase he'd already dropped a few times throughout previous answers, but this time he really seems to mean it.
"I dunno."
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