the week of june 23-29 saw millions of americans rush to their favorite brick and mortar record store to ensure that dinosaur jr's new album "farm" debuted at number 29, the band's highest chart position...ever!*

the new record, dinosaur's first on indie jagjaguwar and second since the 2005 reunion of original members j mascis, lou barlow and murph, is great, if not quite the equal of 07's blistering "beyond". that makes this dinosaur super-fan happy enough, but the distortion-laden bonus disc with four extra tracks puts it over the top. dinosaur have always recorded mean covers, and their version of elyse's forgotten (and neil young-featuring!) psych gem "houses" is no exception. yet it's zombies cover "whenever you're ready" that blows the roof of the sucker, sounding like the best work of a trio of plaintive gremlins:

[mp3] dinosaur jr--"whenever you're ready"

the bonus disc also features a pair of mascis-penned instrumentals. "show" is a weird song that makes no sense (in a bad way, for once). "creepies" is something a little more special, the pummeling and melodic work of a homespun virtuoso:

[mp3] dinosaur jr--"creepies"


*this sentence is 86% factually accurate