Philadelphia Weekly

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The notoriously shy J. Mascis doesn't wear his glasses when he's at the lip of the stage singing and hammering on his guitar while fronting Dinosaur Jr. He'd prefer you, along with the rest of the crowd, turn into one big blur. But when he settles in behind the drum kit in doom-rock quartet Witch, the glasses are on. Partially obscured by the cymbals, massive kick drum and the bodies of his bandmates, Mascis' confidence grows, despite the fact that nearly 25 years of indie-rock stardom mean that all eyes in the room are still on him.

"I feel a little too weird when I'm out front looking at people staring back at me," the 43-year-old Mascis drawls over the phone from his home in Amherst, Mass. "It's a bit too much. I can't really do it sometimes. On the drums I have enough of a buffer so it's less nerve-wracking and, you know ... by pounding on the drums it's more therapeutic if you're nervous."

Mascis remains the Steven Wright of indie rock: That perpetual just-woke-up demeanor, sheepish, slow-voiced, mumbles trailing off into sighs and long stretches of silence ... and yet he's strangely hilarious, bright and undoubtedly a musical savant. Speaking to him reminded me of something Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore--who lives just a few miles down the road from Mascis in Northampton, Mass.--said of his friend and occasional collaborator to The Guardian U.K. two years ago: "J's an interesting guy. There's a lot going on there. You have to read between the lines. Or between the pauses."

Example. How did Witch first come together in 2005? "Uh, hmm ... [eight-second pause] ... I guess just uh, well, Dave the bass player, we were just friends and we wanted to hang out ... [four-second pause] ... and I guess Kyle, the singer and stuff, you know, just ... [five-second pause] ... I guess he was in Feathers. We saw them and, uh ... [six-second pause] ... I guess we kinda thought he had some talent, but I was just wondering, like, why are you in this band convalescing at 19 [slight chuckle]? Don't you wanna rock a little bit first?"

To clarify a bit: "Dave the bass player" is Dave Sweetapple, who befriended Mascis upon first moving to the area in the early 2000s. "Kyle the singer and stuff" is Kyle Thomas, who was a member of the Arthur-approved, Vermont freak-folk collective (and pals of Devendra Banhart) Feathers. Guitarist Asa Irons, another member of Feathers, rounded out the original Witch lineup, though he recently exited the band and was replaced by Antoine Guerlain.

Mascis and Sweetapple certainly convinced Thomas to rock a little bit for Witch's eponymous 2006 debut and last year's Paralyzed. His high-pitched wails and howls about druids and black magic scream Robert Plant, while the rest of the band whips up a sludgy, crushing, occasionally propulsive Sabbath/Saint Vitus stew with a touch of vintage psych-rock swirl; it slots nicely next to the underground-metal of Boris, Earth and Om.

"We just came up with the idea for the band from, you know ... just hanging out at shows and stuff," says Mascis. "Around here there's a lot of noise shows with no songs, just these kinda noise-jams that Thurston is the king of. He usually plays at all the shows in some incarnation. And we were trying to rebel against that in a way just by having songs."

Mascis' favorite thing about making albums with Witch? "I like, you know ... uh ... just playing drums and being done in like two days. That's always a nice position to be in."

Actually, once you get Mascis talking about drumming, he grows (comparatively) animated. As renowned a guitarist as he's become, drums are his first and truest love--he hit the skins in Deep Wound, the early-'80s hardcore band he and Lou Barlow played in before forming Dinosaur Jr., and over the years has sporadically played drums in another doomy New England metal outfit, Upsidedown Cross.

Mascis took acoustic guitar lessons as a kid and hated it, and soon gravitated to the drums, mostly with his parents' blessing. "They were okay with it, except during Jeopardy. My mom was really into Jeopardy. I wasn't allowed to play then. The lights would flash on and off in the basement and I had to stop."

Eventually, Mascis switched to the instrument that's brought him the most acclaim, but, he admits, "I'm always trying to recreate the experience of playing drums when I play guitar. It was so unsatisfying when I started playing the guitar--it just felt so wimpy in comparison to playing drums, so when I started I played with a lot of pedals to simulate dynamics and played really loud to try to get the same feeling as drums. I still play guitar really loud and people are like, you know ... 'Why do you play so loud?' Just to amuse myself. That's really the only reason. I like playing guitar better that way. It's more fun when it's really loud."