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Superchunk

Songs In The Key Of Yikes

    “Bruised Lung.” “No Hope.” “Care Less.” “Climb the Walls.” “Everybody Dies.” Scanning the tracklist of Songs in the Key of Yikes, one is given to wonder: Is Superchunk okay? In a world that’s arguably darker than the one that greeted Wild Loneliness in 2022 or What a Time to Be Alive in 2018, are any of us okay? “It’s always been the case that everyone is going through something that you may not be aware of,” notes Mac McCaughan. “This is currently more true than ever—but also the case that we are all going through some things together. In the face of that, what good is art and where is happiness found? (Spoiler alert: I don’t know.)” In seeking an answer, Songs in the Key of Yikes unleashes a sound that is triumphant and bright in the darkness, Majesty Shredding in overdrive. Lead single “Is It Making You Feel Something” sets the tone early with the band—McCaughan, Laura Ballance, Jim Wilbur, and Laura King— building an anthem out of the potential for joy, diving into slop-polluted waters (“now fakes are faking everything / that once made your poor heart sing”) and emerging with a pearl. “No Hope” is similarly resilient, McCaughan’s lyrics painting a crushing scene before entering its titular refrain. He repeats the phrase nine times, pauses a beat, and transforms its sentiment entirely, breaking the chant with the line “and here we are singing.” The lyric is sharp, at once a simple observation and a profound statement of being, the song’s crushing nights and endless days no less so on its account, but McCaughan’s voice finds a certain sweetness in having endured, and continuing to do so. Paradoxically, the energy of Songs in the Key of Yikes borders on and sometimes spills into euphoria, as in “Stuck in a Dream” which emerges like a mirage-born oasis between “Everybody Dies” and “Train on Fire,” a full-sprint crowd pleaser suitable for pogoing in the pit. “Care Less” is a dark, comic mirror to that energy, a garage-y jam in which an acid-tongued McCaughan seeks refuge from the storm by pretending it’s not raging right outside his door. This strategy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t. It’s a song on a Superchunk album, and Superchunk albums are arguments against insularity, parties large enough to host everyone. This one, in addition to welcoming Laura King into the fold after two years as their touring drummer, features contributions from Rosali Middleman (“Bruised Lung” and “Everybody Dies”), Bella Quinlan and Holly Thomas of Quivers (“Cue”), and touring bassist Betsy Wright (“Care Less”). The album was engineered by Paul Voran (The Menzingers, Hurray for the Riff Raff) and Eli Webb, and mixed by Mike Montgomery (The Breeders, Protomartyr). Together, they reach no conclusions on what good art is in the face of crisis. They also make great art. Songs in the Key of Yikes is a signature Superchunk album: visceral and timeless and catchy as hell—a cathartic balm for these oppressive times that will feel even better once we’ve figured our collective shit out.

    TRACK LISTING

    SIDE A
    1. Is It Making You Feel Something
    2. Bruised Lung
    3. No Hope
    4. Care Less
    5. Climb The Walls
    SIDE B
    6. Cue
    7. Everybody Dies
    8. Stuck In A Dream
    9. Train On Fire
    10. Some Green

    Superchunk

    Misfits & Mistakes: Singles, B-sides & Strays 2007–2023

      Misfits & Mistakes: Singles, B-sides & Strays 2007–2023 is Superchunk’s fourth singles compilation, a massive, 4-LP (or 2-CD) collection covering their triumphant return from hiatus. The amount of ground covered within its gorgeous packaging is staggering: 50 songs, 16 of which are on physical media for the first time, sourced from out-of-print releases, digital singles, compilations, and more, a vital piece of the Superchunk canon.

      Featuring extensive liner notes by Mac McCaughan (with additional notes from Laura Ballance), Misfits & Mistakes tells the story of each release, from why they chose to cover songs by The Misfits, The Cure, Destiny’s Child, and Bananarama, to working with collaborators like Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee), Jane Wiedlin (The Go-Go’s), Eleanor Friedberger, Damian Abraham (Fucked Up), Norman Blake and Raymond

      McGinley (Teenage Fanclub), and more!

      Mac writes:
      Who knew it would take a cartoon hamburger to kick off a new period of activity for Superchunk? When we recorded “Misfits and Mistakes” for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force soundtrack at Overdub Lane in Durham, we also recorded the first version of “Learned to Surf” which gave us an on-ramp for making new music after 8 years of playing sporadic gigs. It also reminded us what we liked about playing Superchunk songs, whether they’re our own or written by our musical heroes. This collection covers a lot of ground, from heavy touring years to a pandemic where we made singles and an album at home. One difference between this comp and our first three is that this time span completely falls in the digital age; the distance from a final mix to everyone hearing it is shorter than ever. I’ve always liked artists that were prolific—throwing out singles in between albums when you least expect it. A surprise release from your favorite band is one of the few things that can still bring a little excitement to what can seem like an endless deluge of “content” (puke). Hopefully the wild swings between lo & hi fi and originals and covers on this comp still allow for some coherence and, more importantly, convey what’s FUN about this punk rock thing.

      TRACK LISTING

      SIDE A
      1. Learned To Surf
      2. Misfits & Mistakes
      3. Screw It Up
      4. Knock Knock Knock
      5. Learned To Surf (Acoustic Demo)
      6. In Between Days
      SIDE B
      7. Crossed Wires
      8. Blinders (Fast Version)
      9. February Punk
      10. Digging For Something (Acoustic Demo)
      11. Horror Business
      12. Sunny Brixton
      13. Bad Influence
      14. Where Eagles Dare
      SIDE C
      1. This Summer
      2. Cruel Summer
      3. Void
      4. Faith
      5. I Hate History
      6. Glue
      7. Me & You & Jackie Mittoo
      8. Sunset Arcade
      9. White Screen
      10. Breaking Down (Acoustic)
      11. Children In Heat
      12. Say My Name
      SIDE D
      1. Good Morning
      2. I Don’t Feel Young
      3. Free Money (with Eleanor Friedberger)
      4. Oh Oh I Love Her So (with Eleanor Friedberger)
      5. Up Against The Wall
      SIDE E
      6. Break The Glass
      7. Mad World
      8. Child’s Christmas In Wales
      9. Break The Glass (Acoustic)
      10. What A Time To Be Alive (Acoustic)
      11. Erasure (Acoustic)
      SIDE F
      1. Our Work Is Done
      2. Total Eclipse
      3. Bum My Trip
      4. Can’t Stop The World
      5. Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing
      6. There’s A Ghost
      7. Alice
      SIDE G
      8. Endless Summer
      9. When I Laugh
      10. Everything Hurts
      11. Making A Break
      12. Group Sex (with Jane Wiedlin)
      13. Blinders

      Superchunk

      Endless Summer

        The first single from Wild Loneliness, “Endless Summer,” features the harmonies of Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley. Participating independent record shops will carry an exclusive translucent lime green edition. Both versions of the 7” contain a cover of The Glands’ “When I Laugh” as the B-side, originally released as part of Merge’s Going to Georgia benefit compilation.

        Superchunk

        Wild Loneliness

          Like every record Superchunk has made over the last thirty-some years, Wild Loneliness is unskippably excellent and infectious. It’s a blend of stripped-down and lush, electric and acoustic, highs and lows, and I love it all. On Wild Loneliness I hear echoes of Come Pick Me Up, Here’s to Shutting Up, and Majesty Shredding. After the (ahem, completely justifiable) anger of What a Time to Be Alive, this new record is less about what we’ve lost in these harrowing times and more about what we have to be thankful for. (I know something about gratitude.

          I’ve been a huge Superchunk fan since the 1990s, around the same time I first found my way to poetry, so the fact that I’m writing these words feels like a minor miracle.) On Wild Loneliness, it feels like the band is refocusing on possibility, and possibility is built into the songs themselves, in the sweet surprises tucked inside them. I say all the time that what makes a good poem the “secret ingredient” is surprise. Perhaps the same is true of songs. Like when the sax comes in on the title track, played by Wye Oak’s Andy Stack, adding a completely new texture to the song. Or when Owen Pallett’s strings come in on “This Night.” But my favorite surprise on Wild Loneliness is when the harmonies of Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley of Teenage Fanclub kick in on “Endless Summer.”

          It’s as perfect a pop song as you’ll ever hear sweet, bright, flat-out gorgeous and yet it grapples with the depressing reality of climate change: “Is this the year the leaves don’t lose their color / and hummingbirds, they don’t come back to hover / I don’t mean to be a giant bummer but / I’m not ready / for an endless summer, no / I’m not ready for an endless summer.” I love how the music acts as a kind of counterweight to the lyrics.

          Because of COVID, Mac, Laura, Jim, and Jon each recorded separately, but a silver lining is that this method made other long-distance contributions possible, from R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, Sharon Van Etten, Franklin Bruno, and Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura, among others. Some of the songs for the record were written before the pandemic hit, but others, like “Wild Loneliness,” were written from and about isolation.

          I’ve been thinking of songs as memory machines. Every time we play a record, we remember when we heard it before, and where we were, and who we were. Music crystallizes memories so well: listening to “Detroit Has a Skyline,” suddenly I’m shout[1]singing along with it at a show in Detroit twenty years ago; listening to Overflows,” I’m transported back to whisper-singing a slowed-down version of it to my young son, that year it was his most-requested lullaby.

          Wild Loneliness is becoming part of my life, part of my memories, too. And it will be part of yours. I can picture people in 20, 50, or 100 years listening to this record and marveling at what these artists created together beauty, possibility, surprise during this alarming (and alarmingly isolated) time. But why wait? Let’s marvel now. - Maggie Smith

          TRACK LISTING

          SIDE A
          City Of The Dead
          Endless Summer
          On The Floor
          Highly Suspect
          Set It Aside
          SIDE B
          This Night
          Wild Loneliness
          Refracting
          Connection
          If You’re Not Dark

          Superchunk

          Here's To Shutting Up (Reissue)

            To write the songs for Here’s to Shutting Up, we gathered in Jim’s garage (he lived way out in the woods) a couple times a week for what seemed like months. We started from actual scratch with no demos or concepts, just playing instrumental music with our usual gear plus a Casio. Sometimes one of us would play the keys instead of our normal instrument, or Jon would hop on guitar and we’d use the Casio drum machine for the beat. We ended up with a LOT of ideas and plenty of good names for them—“Frank’s Bath,” “There’s Something About Marvin,” and “Bestial Warning” to name a few. We recorded practice onto MiniDisc or cassette, and I would ride around listening to these demos and thinking of words. The subject matter, in retrospect, has a lot to do with touring and travel (“Out on the Wing,” “What Do You Look Forward To?”), coming home (“Rainy Streets,” “Act Surprised”), the 2000 election (“Florida’s on Fire”), and late-stage capitalism (“Late-Century Dream,” “The Animal Has Left Its Shell”).

            September 2001: Here’s to Shutting Up was meant to be released on September 18, 2001. On September 11, obviously the world changed. Our release date moved a couple weeks, but our tour dates remained and we flew to Japan in October. It was a WILD time to be traveling the world. Receptions ranged from “thank you for giving us something else to think about” to “why are you here?” We flew home from Japan and left for the UK the day the US started bombing Afghanistan. This was the climate, and the climate was not great for playing rock music. People were thinking about other things. Our friend Annie Hayden (of the band Spent) joined us on keyboards and guitar for the US leg which was an exciting expansion of our lineup and a fun way to play old songs in a new way. We had some great shows along the way and got to tour with excellent openers like Rilo Kiley, The Good Life, and Aereogramme. But the fear in the air and the length of the tour was exhausting. 

            TRACK LISTING

            SIDE A
            1 Late Century Dream
            2 Rainy Streets
            3 Phone Sex
            4 Florida’s On Fire
            5 Out On The Wing

            SIDE B
            6 The Animal Has Left Its Shell
            7 Act Surprised
            8 Art Class (Song For Yayoi Kusama)
            9 What Do You Look Forward To?
            10 Drool Collection

            LP Bonus CD | CD2:
            1 Late-Century Dream (acoustic Demo)
            2 Rainy Streets (acoustic Demo)
            3 The Hot Break (acoustic Demo)
            4 Florida’s On Fire (acoustic Demo)
            5 Act Surprised (acoustic Demo)
            6 A Collection Of Accounts (acoustic Demo)
            7 Art Class (Song For Yayoi Kusama) (acoustic Demo)
            8 Flying Aka Out On The Wing (acoustic Demo)
            9 Becoming A Speck (acoustic Demo)
            10 Frank’s Bath Aka Phone Sex (acoustic Demo)
            11 The Animal Has Left Its Shell (acoustic Demo)
            12 Corp Song Aka What Do You Look Forward To? (acoustic Demo)
            13 Drool Collection (acoustic Demo)


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