A few days before Christmas last year, a friend asked me to spin some records with her during a lazy afternoon broadcast on WKNC 88.1 FM, the student-run radio station of N.C. State University in Raleigh. The students were gone, and the request lines were silent. We plundered the school's music library, stacking gems in a to-play pile that grew quickly. When I found a copy of Foolish, the fourth LP from Superchunk, I demanded we hear "Driveway to Driveway", a strident march of double guitars, heavy rhythms, and Raleigh native Mac McCaughan's thin sneer. Halfway through, my friend grimaced: "I just don't get it," she said, standing in a studio that's about 500 yards from a smal club where Superchunk played one of its first shows in 1989. "I don't understand why people around here are so crazy about Superchunk still."
I stumbled through an answer, depending more on context than an actual defense of, like, the music: Superchunk had been crucial in an indie rock uprising that took root not long after she was born. Their success and North Carolina roots served as a crucial foundation-- or, at least, a seemingly irreplaceable building block-- for the local music scene in which we both worked. After all, Superchunk bassist Laura Ballance and guitarist McCaughan co-founded Merge Records before releasing their first three LPs on Matador. Those records found them an audience, landing the band on the cover of NME and Melody Maker. They brought that success home, releasing their later records on Merge alongside Polvo, the Magnetic Fields, Arcade Fire, Destroyer, and Spoon, among others. "Without Superchunk, where would music here be?" I wondered, hiding behind the easy veil of revisionist history.
But hearing Sur La Bouche: Live in Montreal 1993-- the fourth release in Superchunk's live, limited-edition Clambake series-- hit me with the best defense for the question of Superchunk's staying power and relevance, just as the tape of any loud, 80-minute, two-encore set should: It's the songs, silly. Then as now, Superchunk remains endearingly devoid of bullshit, devoted to writing songs that barrel straight ahead, powering them with energy and volume. On record, Superchunk didn't divert to quirk or gimmick (see Pavement, Dinosaur, Sebadoh, bless 'em all). Instead, they played the songs, presenting them as best they could with a dose of treble on top. On stage, they did the same: At the start of Sur La Bouche, McCaughan asks a technician to kill the spotlights and dry ice. They plow through 18 tunes without much banter, delay, or artifice. They say goodnight, and they're gone.
The riffs and counters of McCaughan and Jim Wilbur slice through the club: "Cast Iron" is a staggered, snarling beast with distorted, whining electric leads as teeth. "Untied" finds the right note and lets its feedback wrap around the head of the melody. The march of Ballance and Wurster inspires a dance party down in front: "Skip Steps 1 & 3" lunges forward only to pull back only to lunge forward, its rhythm both maddening and intoxicating. It's a wonder the pounding "Punch Me Harder" never inspired a riot.
Superchunk's directness is revealing, since the record captures the band at a pivotal point: They were positioned to reach non-indie rock fans. Drummer Jon Wurster had been playing with Superchunk for two years, but the tunes from On the Mouth-- the band's third and final record for Matador, released just a month before this show-- marked his writing and recording debut. On the Mouth augmented that straight-charging Superchunk sound with acoustic guitars for texture and two slow jams for dynamics. Album closer "The Only Piece That You Get", Superchunk's catalog equivelant to Pavement's "Here", did both. But live, it's aching and mean, its electric guitars creeping through Wurster's cymbal destruction.
Similarly, on record, "I Guess I Remember It Wrong" eases open with an acoustic guitar that pops into a spry jangle, somewhere between R.E.M. and Teenage Fanclub. On stage, you hear McCaughan quip "Hit it, Laura" just before Ballance drops a distorted bassline. The band tears through a scrim of feedback, picking up the tempo and dropping the studio's easygoing esprit. Despite making a landmark record with bigger production and more finesse, Superchunk hit the stage with the grit and grind that made their most immediate work their best. In the end, that singularity and focus-- the band's chief strengths-- will win fewer converts than, say, "Chelsea's Little Wrists" or "Don't". But there's nothing about this band to get: Just good songs about grand defiance, coupled with a spirited presentation that still surprises 15 years after one cold night in a hot Montreal club.
