Dinosaur Jr. Release “Garden,” Announce Livestream Performance
Image courtesy of the artist
Amherst natives Dinosaur Jr. have shared their second song in anticipation of Sweep It Into Space, out April 23 on Jagjaguwar, and one of Paste’s most-anticipated albums of next month. “Garden” follows lead single “I Ran Away,” and arrives with an accompanying music video.
Founding member Lou Barlow wrote and performed “Garden,” following his tradition of making a two-song lead vocal cameo on a Dinosaur Jr. album. The music video for the moving, bittersweet single was co-directed by Barlow and his wife Adelle. The band is shown playing outside in frigid Western Massachusetts, and the white, snowy landscape gets some added color through animated illustrations by Chloe Hemingway and John Moloney.
Barlow said of “Garden’s” lyrical and cinematic creation:
Everyone seemed to want a disruption in the order of American life, it seemed necessary. Then it happened. It began as a bitter lamentation but as I was finishing the lyrics, singing over the instrumental version of the song while driving to J’s through the miles of farmland that separate his studio in Amherst and my home in Greenfield (Massachusetts), I saw a sign on a shed: Back to the Garden. I was looking for a resolution, where do we go when faced with such dramatic confusion? Back to basics, back home, back to the garden. Luckily I was able to complete the vocals and instrumentation for the song just before the quarantine.