Superchunk "Wild Loneliness"
Superchunk "Wild Loneliness"
Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan has a peculiar ability to sound as though he possesses a frisky delinquent heart while he aims his vocals at post-adolescent matters. Among rock singers, perhaps only the late Tommy Keene could make the paradox of teenage maturity work so well.
The paradox remains pleasurably effective on Wild Loneliness, the 12th full-length from an indie band that has and hasn’t changed much since its eponymous debut album came out in 1990. McCaughan isn’t directly talking about Superchunk with “And the kids are scarred but smarter,” a key line in the slowly blossoming first track, “City of the Dead,” but the phrase fits.
The smarter Superchunk polishes small stones of wisdom with buzzing musicality: the Jeff Tweedyish admission of a put-on “cheerful affect” in “Highly Suspect” shines through Beirut member Kelly Pratt’s bright horns, while the desire not to experience an “Endless Summer” rests inside the sunny bed of harmonies provided by Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley.
Many other alt- and indie-rock players are here, including Wye Oak’s Andy Stack, playing lucidly mournful saxophone on the title track; Franklin Bruno and R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, adding piano and vocals, respectively, to the Buddy Holly and Tom Petty influences of “On the Floor”; and singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten, dueting with McCaughan toward hope on “If You’re Not Dark.”
With or without collaborators, Superchunk stays true to its strengths, like drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Laura Ballance’s supple rhythmic interplay, Jim Wilbur’s anything-but-second guitar, and McCaughan’s guitar, crisp production, and aforementioned voice.
The quartet does what it’s done before—running a crackling wire of rock ‘n’ roll energy through lean punk (“Refracting”), crystalline folk (“Set It Aside”), Byrdsian pop (“Connection”), etc.—with allowances for age and some earned knowledge. Superchunk is indeed scarred but smarter, and Wild Loneliness rings with the possibility that scars don’t have to be permanent.
|
|
