Photo by Cara Totman
Dinosaur Jr returns next month with its fifth post-reunion album and 12th overall, the 12-song, pandemic-delayed Sweep It Into Space, which the trio will support with a 42-date North American tour that starts in September and will wrap up next February.
The album is due out April 23 via Jagjaguwar — it can be preordered now — and is preceded by the single “I Ran Away,” featuring Kurt Vile on guitar, which you can hear below.
The band — J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph — had planned to release the record in mid-2020, but it, like so much else, was thrown off by the COVID-19 pandemic. Recording began in the fall of 2019, and features Vile as the only guest musician after Mascis ended up finishing things off in lockdown.
In the news release announcing the album, Mascis says:
“Kurt was gonna come up another time but he got Corona’d. He played little lead things, like 12 string one at the beginning of ‘I Ran Away.’ Then I ended up just mimicking a few things he’d done. I was listening to a lot of Thin Lizzy, so I was trying to get some of that dueling twin lead sound.”
The album is the band’s first since 2016’s Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not, and comes more than 15 years after the original lineup reunited.
After dipping their toes back into live performance with a pair of socially distanced concerts in New England last September, the band members are planning a full-on return to the road beginning in September — banking on enough people being vaccinated that club shows start happening again on a wide scale.
The tour opens Sept. 7 in Montreal and the first leg will run through early October, followed by more dates in November and a third leg in February that wraps up in Denver.
Below, listen to “I Ran Away,” see full tour dates and check out the cover art and tracklist for the new record.
Dinosaur Jr 2021-2021 tour dates
Sept. 7: Corona Theatre, Montreal, QC
Sept. 9: Danforth Music Hall, Toronto, ON
Sept. 10: TBA, Pittsburgh, PA
Sept. 11: Majestic Theatre, Detroit, MI
Sept. 13: Majestic Theatre, Madison, WI
Sept. 14: First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
Sept. 16: The Pageant, St. Louis, MO
Sept. 20: The Waiting Room, Omaha, NE
Sept. 21: Truman, Kansas City, MO
Sept. 23: Moody Theater @ ACL Live, Austin, TX
Sept. 24: White Oak Music Hall, Houston, TX
Sept. 25: Canton Hall, Dallas, TX
Sept. 27: Saturn, Birmingham, AL
Sept. 28: The Bluebird, Bloomington, IN
Sept. 30: Athenaeum Theatre, Columbus, OH
Oct. 1: Agora, Cleveland, OH
Oct. 2: State Theatre, Ithaca, NY
Nov. 12: Brooklyn Bowl, Nashville, TN
Nov. 13: Masquerade, Atlanta, GA
Nov. 15: Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC
Nov. 16: 9:30 Club, Washington, D.C.
Nov. 18: Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA
Nov. 19: College Street Music Hall, New Haven, CT
Nov. 20: Brooklyn Steel, Brooklyn, NY
Nov. 26: Academy of Music, Northampton, MA
Nov. 27: House Of Blues, Boston, MA
Feb. 3: Pappy and Harriets, Pioneertown, CA
Feb. 4: Brooklyn Bowl, Las Vegas, NV (with Built to Spill)
Feb. 5: The Depot, Salt Lake City, UT
Feb. 7: Knitting Factory Music Hall, Spokane, WA
Feb. 8: Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, BC
Feb. 10: Showbox at Market, Seattle, WA
Feb. 11: TBA, Portland, OR
Feb. 12: TBA, Portland, OR
Feb. 15: Ace of Spades, Sacramento, CA
Feb. 16: The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA
Feb. 17: The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA
Feb. 19: The Fonda, Los Angeles, CA
Feb. 20: The Fonda, Los Angeles, CA
Feb. 22: Observatory North Park, San Diego, CA
Feb. 23: Crescent Ballroom, Phoenix, AZ
Feb. 25: El Rey Theatre, Albuquerque, NM
Feb. 26: Ogden Theatre, Denver, CO
Dinosaur Jr, Sweep It Into Space
1. “I Ain’t”
2. “I Met The Stones”
3. “To Be Waiting”
4. “I Ran Away”
5. “Garden”
6. “Hide Another Round”
7. “And Me”
8. “I Expect It Always”
9. “Take It Back”
10. “N Say”
11. “Walking To You”
12. “You Wonder”
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Dinosaur Jr in the studio recording follow-up to 2016’s ‘Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not’
- Listen: Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis covers Tom Petty’s classic single ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’
- Stream this goldmine of ’80s/’90s live tapes from Sonic Youth, The Fall, Hüsker Dü, Pixies and more
- Vintage Video: Dinosaur Jr previews ‘You’re Living All Over Me’ at UMass in 1986
- ‘120 Minutes’ Rewind: Dinosaur Jr goes looking for a new bass player via fax — 1991
- Watch J Mascis cover Mazzy Star’s ‘Fade Into You’ on ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers’
