Dinosaur Jr @ Liverpool Music Week, 27 Oct

It was legendary Joy Division producer Martin Hannett who told Ian Curtis and co, "I want you to play that again…only this time make it faster, but slower."

You wonder what Hannett would have made of Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis – a man who seems to have all the urgency of dozing sloth on quaaludes and yet one who can produce some of the most brutish and breakneck riffs in alternative rock history.

Four albums into one of the more succcessful comebacks of recent years, Dinosaur Jr show no signs of sullying what is becoming a uniquely consistent back catalogue. New album Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not rarely falls below the standards of peak Dinosaur sets like Green Mind or Bug, as witnessed by the seamless insertion of great tracks like Love is the Law and Tiny into a set which is happy to pay tribute to the band's past as much as it asserts them as far from a grunge fossil as it's possible to get.

Tonight they hit the ground running with Green cut Thumb and for the next two hours produce a masterclass in the fuzzy downer rock that briefly made them contenders for the kind of crossover stardom that was soon to be Nirvana's for the taking.

Crucial to this new-found energy is the presence of original bassist Lou Barlow, whose dynamic bass playing acts as a welcome contrast to Mascis' lethargy. Despite the much trumpeted animosity between the pair, the former Sebadoh man appears to be having a ball under his pile of corkscrew hair as he batters his instrument this way and that, indulging the audience in the odd grin and wave.

While it's hard to read anything into what Mascis is thinking, his actual playing is extraordinary – he teases blistering solo after blistering solo out of his instrument with all the care of a hungover man cleaning his teeth. And yet, despite his ever-apparent soporific demeanor, there are hints that even Mascis is feeling invigorated: witness the presence of an extra guitarist and drummer on The Wagon's classic grunge-pop, which turns this yearning thrash-a-long into something far more deep and heavy.

Other former favourites such as Feel The Pain, Just Like Heaven and of course the unimpeachable brilliance of Freak Scene are all boosted by this sense of exuberance, and epitomised by a breathless Murph powering things along behind the kit with all the dynamism of a man half his age.

When it's all over there's barely a grunt from Mascis, but if there was ever a band to let their instruments do the talking, it's Dinosaur Jr. Long may they avoid extinction.