J Mascis, “What Do We Do Now.”

There’s a special kind of yearning found in only the best of love letters: short vague sentences, pregnant with meaning, written to be read over and over again like a magical incantation. “Wish you were here,” “Thinking of you,” “You’re living all over me.” Think star-crossed lovers, separated by circumstance and reunited by the postal service. These aren’t emails. The letter must cross the miles between you or the effect is lost.

Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis figured out a way to recreate this long distance ache with fuzzed-out guitars and wistfully stoned lyricism 40 years ago. And while the digital age may have transformed letters into emails and mixtapes into playlists, it hasn’t changed the analog emotionalism of his band or his approach. What Do We Do Now, his fourth solo album under his own name and first since 2018’s Elastic Days, captures him doing what he does best, simultaneously bursting hearts and ear drums with overdriven limmerance.

Real Dinosaur Jr. fans can already hear the way J. Mascis sings the word “everybody” in the first line of the album’s opener, “Can’t Believe We’re Here.” There’s a certain minor key melancholy to his voice that will transport you back to hearing Dinosaur Jr. in a dark bar 30 years ago while you picked the label off your cold bottle of Miller Light and thought about a girl. “Everybody made a fuss/ Hard to know it’s one of us,” Mascis sings before the song moves from jangly acoustic guitar to a face-melting guitar solo.

Mascis has also developed some new approaches in his solo work. There’s a syncopated acoustic guitar plink on “What We Know” that accomplishes the same kind of sonic ornamentation a younger Mascis might have employed feedback-drenched electric guitar to achieve. On “Set Me Down,” he deploys the kind of driving acoustic guitar found on Cat Stevens records and ’80s TV theme songs. But the sentiment is the same: I love you too much to get specific.

“Come on, it feels so bad, you’re the one/ I’m all in/ You lost it/ I’m here to stay,” he sings over the sedate intensity of ’80s AM radio yacht rock.

“You Don’t Understand Me” moves gracefully between two chords with Tom-Petty-esque simplicity as he sings, “You don’t understand me, guess you never will/ Never made it past this point, looking you can tell.” The slide guitar that decorates the second half of the song is languid and graceful rather than frenzied and chaotic.

But Mascis has still got it. The screaming guitar solo that concludes “I Can’t Find You” crackles with his characteristic six-string intensity so far removed from his low key vibe away from the guitar.

That’s always been Dinosaur Jr.’s vibe: We’re having a lot of heavy feelings right now, but we don’t wanna look like we care, so I’ll just shred the hell out of this guitar. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.