SUPERCHUNK

TRIED AND TRUE

North Carolina indie stalwarts Superchunk retain their will to rock on I Hate Music

by Matt Ashare |  
Published September 18, 2013

"I hate music/What is it worth?/Can't bring anyone back to this earth," proclaims Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan, his voice clenched tight as a cramped muscle on the supercharged "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo." It's de facto title track of "I Hate Music." the North Carolina foursome's tenth studio album in twenty years, and the disc they'll be supporting when they headline the the Southern in Charlottesville on Monday, September 23. With twin guitars set on stun, and bassist Laura Ballance and drummer Jon Wurster converging from the flanks to corral the bristling melodic buzz, McCaughan coyly admits, "I'm filling the space between all of these notes/But I got nothing else, so I guess here we go. . ."
    And, with that, the Chapel Hill-based band who have done as much, if not more, than anyone else to define the boundaries of indie-rock, musically, philosophically, and otherwise, are off and running, bashing and popping their way through the just under two minutes of modestly anthemic, slyly celebratory epiphonic rock redux that  it takes to drive home the point of "Jackie Mittoo." And the point is, as easy as it may be cough out a line like "I hate music," it's still pretty darn hard to resist the infectious, very nearly primal tug of a muscular backbeat, a churning riff, and urgent vocal. As McCaughan sums it up in one of the album's many telling slice-of-life scenes that belie his true feelings for the music he's devoted much of his own life to, "Crammed into the back of a van, oh yeah/All of our plans with no plan, oh yeah/Some wild jockey up in the front seat/Put in a tape and put up your feet on the dash."
    Oh yeah, oh yeah, indeed. "Jackie Mittoo" amounts to an unapologetically nostalgic ode to the mythical good old days of just living in the moment, a contradiction that isn't so much lost on McCaughan as it is discarded as irrelevant. Because, if only for the fleeting breadth of that one song, the past exists in the present tense, as McCaughan captures the freewheeling spirit of tooling around anytown, USA, with the stereo blasting and the windows rolled down, on his way to do some serious bin scavenging at a used record store. If nothing else, that's a pretty good distillation of the essence of that elusive thing called indie rock, for whatever that's worth. And, clearly, it's still worth quite a bit to Superchunk, who have made a career out of thriving in the overcrowded underground, of reveling in small epiphanies, of keeping the best of the past close at hand as they charge forward.
    Like most of the songs on "I Hate Music," "Jackie Mittoo" is the kind of caffeinated, yet subtly reflective post-punk salvo that wouldn't have sounded particularly out of place in a Superchunk set ten or even twenty years ago. Since emerging as one of an emerging generation of artists inspired by the anyone-can-play spirit of punk, and schooled in the DIY rules of left-of-the-dial college radio, Superchunk have remarkably consistent, almost dependably so. They have thrown in a minor curveball here and there — their 1995 album "Here's Where the Strings Come In," while playing on the McCaughan's proto-emo penchant for heart-on-torn-sleeve confessions, also happened to feature some string arrangements. But, mostly they've stuck to the tried and true — rough hewn nuggets of guitar-driven rock shot through with emotional intensity, delivered briskly and with a minimum of fuss, and very nearly aggressively unpretentious in nature.
    Unfortunately, reliability isn't always an advantage on the artsier fringes of the underground, where the eclecticism and unpredictability of artists like Beck, Radiohead, and Wilco are viewed as salient virtues. In a sense, Superchunk have remained one of the exceptions that proves the rule that experimentation is a primary measure of artistic merit. But, there's another aspect of Superchunk that's kept them relevant even as they've steadfastly resisted the temptation to trend, and that would be the independent label that McCaughan and Ballance founded in 1989 to release the band's first single, Merge Records.
    Back in the early ’90s, there were plenty of indie labels that catered to underground tastes — Sub Pop is one that comes to mind. But, in the major-label feeding frenzy that followed the upstart platinum success of Nirvana in 1991, many of those indies essentially became stepping stones to the mainstream world of big money contracts with companies hungry to cash in on alternative rock. That put Superchunk squarely in the right place at the right time to jump to the front of the line of major-label hopefuls. But Superchunk, in what may have seemed like a foolish move at the time, opted out of the running, and continued on as they had before "Nevermind," releasing their music on Merge, with a little early help from the NYC indie Matador, and gradually growing their business.
    In the mythos of indiedom, where smaller is always better, there may be something noble about that decision. But, it also turned out to be a good move in a larger sense — an oddly prescient move, at that — because, as the conventional music business model began to fold under pressure from digital innovations, Merge thrived as a home not just for Superchunk, but for an ever expanding roster of indie artists who have garnered not just critical accolades, but also commercial success. The most notable example are the Arcade Fire, who not only topped the sales charts with their 2010 Merge release "The Suburbs," but also went on to win the 2011 Grammy for Album of the Year.
    To a very real degree, the existence of Merge has insulated Superchunk from some of the nastier necessities of the mainstream music business. While I won't get into the economic realities of it here, suffice to say that the band are essentially their own bosses, accountable only to themselves, their fans, and whomever else they may or may not desire to please. So, they took nearly a decade off beginning in 2001, only resurface as if they hadn't so much as skipped a beat on 2010's aptly titled "Majestic Shredding." And, over the years, they've released more vinyl singles than any other band I can think of. Basically, they convene when it feels right, record in the manner they so choose (strings embellishments or not), and release their music directly through a label run by two of the band's principal founding members.
    The results have spoken for themselves. As merely the latest installment of an ongoing saga, "I Hate Music" reflects a certain simple joy of being caught up in the moment, of nailing down an elusive melody, of reliving a fleeting memory, of getting carried away both physically and emotionally by something that's so ingrained it just comes naturally. There aren't any songs on the album that ruminate on the rigors of life on the road. But there is one track — the feedback-laced rocker "Trees of Barcelona" — that recounts the various pleasures of playing a festival in Spain, including an after-hours club session playing covers for fans McCaughan refers to as "our Spanish sisters and brothers." And, the angular "Break Down," with its squalls of plaintively overbent soling by guitarist Jim Wilbur, isn't so much about struggling with emotional turmoil as it is a raucous reminder not to take the little things for granted.
    As McCaughan asks in the slow burner "Low F," "At the risk of sounding obvious and oblivious of a thousand other answers, do you think the answer's love?" And then, with guitars crashing in on him as the song winds down, he responds, "Well you have my answer, and you'll have it until my last breath. . yes, yes. . ." At the risk of sounding obvious and oblivious, that seems to be about as straightforwardly profound as any lyric need be.