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Dinosaur Jr. — 2026

“Twenty years into the reunion, Dinosaur Jr. still sound exactly like Dinosaur Jr., and that remains a very good thing.”

Twenty years into their reunion and Dinosaur Jr. still sound exactly like Dinosaur Jr. which will probably be a relief to hear for many of their fans. This is the sixth studio album the reunited trio has made since coming back, and Murph, Lou Barlow, and J Mascis show zero interest in fixing what was never broken. J’s guitar tone might be the most feral it has sounded in years, partly because he tracked down a vintage Mesa Boogie to get closer to the raw sound of the band’s first record, and you can hear the results the second “Several Got Away” opens the record. The riffs bite a little extra, the solos wander as expected, and the entire album roars without ever taking its foot off the pedal.

What keeps the record from being just another album in the catalog is the way the writing pulls in two directions. J mostly sings in the third person, so a line like “I got no friends to speak of, feeling so weighted down” plays more like a character sketch than a personal disclosure, and even the calmest track here, “Put It Down,” eventually blows apart in a storm of distortion. Barlow’s two lead vocals do their usual balancing act. “Blowin’ Up” and “No One’s Ready” trade J’s shrug for something more direct, with Lou sneering at a “bored edge lord” and asking “no one’s ready for your war, what’s it for?” with real conviction. Honestly, I would love to have heard more of this fire. My one small critique is that nothing here has reached out and grabbed me on its own the way the very best Dino songs do, no “Feel the Pain” or “Tiny” that pulls me back to the album by itself. As a full set of eleven, though, it hangs together beautifully. I think it edges out Sweep It Into Space (2021) while landing just below 2016’s Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not.