Dinosaur Jr. have released a new live album, ‘Emptiness At The Sinclair’ – you can listen to it in full below.

The influential US indie rock band released their new documentary, Freakscene: The Story Of Dinosaur Jr., earlier this month, and now they’ve given fans something else to get their teeth stuck into.

Recorded at Boston venue Sinclair, Emptiness At The Sinclair includes live renditions of a number of tracks that span the entire career of the Massachusetts trio, including fan favourites such as ‘Just Like Heaven’ and ‘Freak Scene’, as well as a few newer cuts from their most recent album, ‘Sweep It Into Space’.

“It was odd going back to Harvard Square for the Sinclair show, lots of closed shops, less car and foot traffic, my first time back in a big-city since it all went down,” the band’s bassist Lou Barlow said in a press release. “I had lived in Boston for about 10 years from the late 80’s-90’s and the bustling square was a common destination to look for records and meet with friends. The empty pandemic feel spooked me.”

He continued: “Playing for a livestream is like pushing a rock up a hill trying to recreate the vibe of a real show. The isolation of the last year had made me nervous about performing again, especially in the context of Dinosaur Jr. where I typically rely on the energy of our crowd. Playing to an invisible audience and a real-time sparsely populated room of people doing their jobs (running lights, sound and staring at screens) was something different and, again, weird.

“Despite all my lockdown doubts once we started playing things clicked. My mind didn’t highjack me and it quickly began to feel like a real show. Having a few decent gigs on the Sinclair stage before, it began to feel familiar and, for lack of a better word, friendly. It will be much more of a relief to get back on tour but, this Sinclair show was a good band-aid, so to speak.”

You can listen to ‘Emptiness At The Sinclair’ below:

Freakscene: The Story Of Dinosaur Jr charts the journey of frontman J Mascis, bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Murph, painting a portrait of a band of cult icons without whom modern rock would be very different.

The movie captures the trio’s first-hand accounts of their rollercoaster 37-year career, while director Philipp Reichenheim takes you along for the ride through archival footage from concerts and music videos, as well as brand-new interviews. It’s not just the band members who help tell the story – some of their peers and famous fans appear too, including Kim Gordon, Henry Rollins, Bob Mould and Thurston Moore.

In a four-star review, NME‘s Ali Shutter wrote: “For diehard fans, Freakscene is a new look at a much-loved story and for newcomers, it’s the perfect introduction to the foundations of an iconic band.”