“You’ve got to talk about layers,” shouted the fan next to me, a large man who had traveled from upstate, in reference to the wash of sound floating toward us from the speakers 50 yards away. As J Mascis – the frontman and guitarist for the temporarily reunited Dinosaur Jr. – tumbled into another screaming avalanche of a guitar solo, any hope of further verbal communication was abandoned.

Formed by three men with backgrounds in hardcore and punk – Mascis on vocals and guitar, Lou Barlow on bass, and Emmett Jefferson “Murph” Murphy III on drums – Dinosaur Jr. created sprawling, wall-of-sound guitar rock that was textured, skillful, and loud (it’s hard to overstate the latter).The band released three albums in the late 1980s (recently rereleased on Merge) that quickly attained seminal status.

The influence of that music was felt throughout the 1990s in the rise of grunge, shoegaze, and noisecore. The band, however, spiraled into the internecine tension that captures so many rock groups. This summer they are playing together in their original lineup for the first time since 1989.

Taking the stage as dusk settled on Central Park, Dinosaur Jr. played a nearly two-hour set that showcased with dexterity much of those first three albums. Perhaps most remarkable was the level of detail the band achieved within its white squall. Mascis’s guitar – more the lead than his mumbled, laconically flat vocals – switched continually between driving the clamor and riding atop it. Barlow’s bass frequently leapt out of the mix – a helpful friend in giving some melodic core to follow.

What was both refreshing and elegiac about the music was how trapped in its own time it remained. Dinosaur Jr. is often credited with bringing loud guitars and a feel-the-noise mentality back into independent rock. In the current climate of cool and metallic modern rock, it was a pleasure to be reminded of a band that didn’t seem to care about anything but making the best, loudest, and most cathartic music it could.