Heavy Blanket - Heavy Blanket

by Paul Waller

published: 10 / 7 / 2012

Label: Outer Battery Records
Format: CD

Self-indulgent and unnecessary eponymous debut album from Heavy Blanket, the new instrumental project of Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis

Review

When first coming across Heavy Blanket I heard that it was a J Mascis side project where he simply solos over instrumental Dinosaur Jr tunes. This was enough to sell it to me for I love Dinosaur, and my favourite part of their songs is the huge pounding guitar solos that punctuate the middle eights. How could I be on to a loser? As for the band themselves the press release tells us that the group is a three piece formed many years ago, but jail and Pearl Jam stopped them from ever releasing this colossal solo fest. More likely me thinks is that the multi-talented Mascis wrote and recorded this as a breather from his day job. Well, it's far from a stinker but what purpose this serves is anyone's guess. The description that I heard was pretty much spot on but when a solo starts two bars into an eight minute stomper such as ‘Spit in the Eye’ and only finishes as the track winds to a close I don’t want it followed with more of the same. Even with a two track 7" only the hardiest whacked out stoner would feel the benefit, perhaps though, that is the point. Still; even then they would get annoyed at having to flip the record over. So in short, the more drugs you take, the more joy you will receive from this record