J. Mascis at Galatos

By GRAHAM REID

Really, you had to be there. And the moment you had to be there for came early on in the show when this former frontman for rowdy rockers Dinosaur Jr. kicked some foot pedal and unleashed a firestorm.

In the blink of an eye, Mascis shifted from acoustic folkie to white-heat rocker delivering with blistering intensity.

It was an extraordinary, eyebrow raising moment and greeted with delight by the capacity audience, many of whom doubtless recall the noise machine that was Dinosaur Jr., one of the loudest bands to play here.

With cracked voice - think a world-weary Neil Young in a stupor - and howling guitar, this solo show could have been billed, "An Intimate Evening with J. Mascis and Crazy Horse".

Mascis - with long stringy hair and geek glasses, he looked like a slacker physics graduate - alternated between his gorgeous ballads and some sky-scaling guitar drama, often within the same song.

While he favoured the ballads from his new album Free So Free - he opened with a refined and low-key treatment of Someone Said - he also touched base with some of his former band's catalogue and managed to conjure up the same intensity from a seated position.

In fact Mascis, who barely said a word to the audience, remained a static figure which belied the firestorm he would occasionally unleash.

The spirit of electric Neil Young is certainly the reference point, but Mascis was also much his own man and his acoustic playing was rich and hard-edged, his supersonic flights often thrilling in their tortured passage.

Over the long arc - a tidy 80 minutes plus an encore - there was a sameness to proceedings (quiet, loud, quiet, louder) but within individual songs Mascis displayed his undeniable guitar genius. And often very loudly.

Yes, you really had to be there.