Flyin' the Flannel*

"I've got nothing left to be
Do you have some plans for me?"
"Plans", Dinosaur Jr.

In heavy rotation is the newest album from Dinosaur Jr., FARM. It's a wonderful sludgy mess and I can't stop listening to it. Sure, it could have been a bit shorter (maybe lop off 2 or 3 songs), but otherwise one of the highlights of 2009 so far.

FARM just makes me want to dig out and put on my grossest jeans, thermal undershirt, cozy flannel shirt (or two), and tuck my dirty hair up under a watch cap, followed by curling up on the floor with a six pack, a copy of Ben is Dead, pack of smokes, and listening to music all night. I want to be, as an Ex once described my fashion sense, "a grunge reject from 1992" again.

Fine. I romanticize the late 80s/early 90s, up until around a certain date in 1994. I had boundless energy, a hollow leg for drinking, and a sweet cheap apartment. I was also much happier than I am now. Until recently, I didn't realize that there was another reason they were a glorious half-decade.

The (ahem) "grunge years" weren't littered with all the whimsically twee shit that clutters and clogs all aspects of today's popular media (music, films, print).

They were free of the "precious" stylings of low-fi folk musicians like Kimya Dawson, free of organized kickball leagues and other organized schoolyard games played by adults, free of toddler dance parties at hipster bars. There were no Diablo Cody-written screenplays, no men wearing $30 powder pink t-shirts with sparkly unicorns and rainbows (in fact, there were no $30 t-shirts except Calvin Klein), and I'm pretty sure that men grew beards out of laziness and need for warmth, not to be an urban gnome (or, alternately, "beardo"). Not every craft project featured an owl. Brooklyn was where people lived if they couldn't afford Manhattan, and wasn't Ground Zero for Hipsters. Yes, there was irony, perhaps even smirking irony, but at least it wasn't smugness or worse, smirking smugness.

Things weren't precious, darling, adorable, whimsical, twee, fanciful, or flighty. They were thick and sludgy and layered: the music, the clothes, and the literature. People were angry, people were depressed, and somehow that made for great music.

If Kurt Cobain hadn't shot himself in 1994, knowing sites such as Look at This Fucking Hipster needed to exist may have gotten that gun in his hand, pronto. Finding out that Look at This Fucking Hipster is being turned into a book certainly would have.

(Stream tracks from FARM at Dinosaur Jr.'s MySpace page.)

*Tip o' the hat to Mike Watt.