The smell of sauerkraut and kielbasa floats into one’s nostrils as you enter what looks to be a Junior High School auditorium, but the Warsaw ain’t your typical venue. In fact this club located between Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn is an actual Polish community center during the day and randomly plays host to interesting national acts at night.
Headlining your grandma’s daytime bridge club are the behemoths of psychedelic indie rock, Dinosaur Jr. It has been over a year now since the original members have reunited and they are continuing to pummel live crowds with sonic interplay. Overall the show was a bit rawer then their last NYC appearance at Irving Plaza which they filmed for a future DVD release and which by all accounts was a staggering success. Tonight started with the same song “Tarpit” but Dino was a bit stuck in the fossilizing mud. Murph’s drum’s in particular seemed to be mic’ed low, or giving him problems throughout the set, as a drum tech was on stage so much people may have mistook him for a fourth band member. The trio plunged into their old songs and peeled the paint off the Warsaw walls with an explosive “The Wagon,” a poppy “In a Jar” and a hardcore pounding “Mountain Man.”
The band plays with such fury it is amazing they are still contained inside smaller clubs but who’s complaining? These intimate venues let eardrums split while the band toys with audio madness. The Warsaw’s sound was not ideal, but it did improve with each song until the climaxing finale of “Sludgefeast.” Highlighting the set along the way were the numbers that Dinosaur Jr. decided to open up and explore that included an expansive “The Lung,” J Mascis is a titan on guitar, and yet looks like a Dungeon Master in Purple Tye-Dye and long gray hair; he rolls his six stringed dice and conjures up level two jet screams and whammy bar assaults with ease.
Any night is a good night to dig into Dinosaur Jr. but the Warsaw show may have been a really special one, because it turns out the group got a bunch of their equipment stolen after the show. Here’s hoping though that they get it back and their signature sound returns with them for many more bingo hall concerts to come.
Photo by Kevin Scanlon
