Every sorcerer needs an apprentice, and vice versa, even if they’ve scarcely met. Take J Mascis and his acolytes in Yuck. He is the potheaded Gandalf of a guitar hero behind Dinosaur Jr, the veteran American alt-rock trio; they are the north London hot tips recasting such late-1980s/early-1990s sounds to joyous effect.
In 1988, Dinosaur Jr’s single Freak Scene won them a wider audience in Britain, though the spell was wearing off as Nirvana went supernova in 1991. Yuck’s self-titled debut, out on Mercury, is so besotted with that era’s fuzzy charms, it’s practically a love letter. How far do the whippersnappers stretch their ancestor worship? And what does Mascis, deep in middle-aged reflection on his gorgeous new acoustic-led album for Sub Pop, Several Shades of Why, make of them nicking his old tricks? It seems the ideal moment to put this éminence grise and the young shavers in touch.
That was my thinking when I asked them to send me questions for each other. I would then be the go-between over the phone. Barely beyond their teens, Yuck were whippet-quick off the mark. Mascis, never one to utter a sentence when a syllable will do, responded at his own shambling pace. Yuck wanted to know, among other things, how he records his demos (“On iPhone”), whether being a drummer improves his songwriting (“Yes” — he hates “a boring beat”) and his three favourite Neil Young songs (“Will to Love, maybe Powderfinger and I’ve Been Waiting for You”). Laconic and droll, Mascis’s questions for Yuck included “Any near-death experiences?”, “Any alien-abduction stories?” and “Is Hiroshima the most punk-rock place to be from?” — a reference to the birthplace of their female bassist, Mariko Doi.
In a multinational line-up, Yuck’s drummer, Jonny Rogoff, hails from New Jersey. The front man, Daniel Blumberg, and the guitarist, Max Bloom, formed Yuck 12 months on from splitting their Hampstead school band — the precocious, slightly plummy new-wave-alikes Cajun Dance Party — after too much industry Next Big Thingness too soon. Blumberg’s sister Ilana is an occasional fifth member. Despite supporting the re-formed Dinosaur Jr at Shepherd’s Bush Empire last year, Yuck didn’t get much face time with their idol — but then Mascis isn’t wild on chat. Bloom remembers nervously inquiring what guitar he was using: “He replied, ‘The same as usual.’”
The slacker’s slacker, a Dude among dudes, Mascis likens songwriting to fishing — “Just sittin’ there with your guitar, waitin’.” He must be pleased with his catch on Several Shades of Why: the tunes have the aw-shucks poignancy of the Lemonheads, his singing voice rasps as appealingly as a stoner Springsteen. When it comes to talking, he’s like a cartoon bear that has been bullied out of hibernation, his “yeahs” almost identical to his yawns. How does he feel about the lionising of Dinosaur Jr, 20 years on? “Ahuum, that’s great,” he drawls eventually. “It’s hard to know what kids listen to and how they arrive at that now... I guess the times are always right.” He has long been content simply to do his thang. What does he recall of that London gig with Yuck? “I think it was all right,” he says. “I remember... some of their hairdos ... Ahuum, [their music] seemed pretty Nineties...”
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The slacker's slacker, Mascis likens songwriting to fishing — 'Just sittin’ there with your guitar, waitin’'
The bassist in Cajun Dance Party, Bloom had little creative input in his previous band; when he switched to guitar, his new-found Dinosaur Jr fandom came to the fore. Their 1987 album You’re Living All over Me fired his imagination — “I wanted to play loud guitar music, and I connected with that album more than anything else.” Without period baggage, he could listen from an “unaffected, unbiased viewpoint”.
Bloom does not deny Yuck’s influences, but argues, maturely, I think, that they shouldn’t be held against them. “In some ways, that’s what a debut album should be like,” he says. “You should be able to hear the excitement of a band not particularly thinking or caring what other people think... just being excited and all over the place.”
Yuck’s future sound may end up being closer to that of Teenage Fanclub, grunge associates who mellowed, than that of the noisier, more intransigent Dinosaur Jr. But what advice does Mascis, who plays Cargo, EC2, on April 14, have for Yuck in the meantime? “Entertain yourself first and hope that others will be entertained by it,” he says, with the wisdom of three decades as an indie alchemist.
We also want answers to Mascis’s hat-trick of curve balls. Is Hiroshima the most punk-rock place to be from? According to Bloom, Doi said: “No, because I’m not there.” (“And the funny thing is,” he adds, “she wasn’t
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joking.”) As for any near-death experiences, Bloom choked on a gobstopper as a six-year-old. And alien abduction? “Jonny has lots of crackpot theories about alien stuff... There’s one about this rudimentary battery that was found near the pyramids, which suggests aliens helped the ancient Egyptians to build in the dark.” Well, J, it’s a kind of magic, no?