Twelve years is a long time to hold a job. Any elderly engineer or factory worker can attest to the banality of the same tired day-to-day routines. Eventually, wasted months trail behind like a dense fog in your hazy memory, leaving you wondering if there was even any point to it all. Fortunately for Superchunk, their job entails being a highly influential rock band with a devoted fanbase, their own record label, and a legacy that most of the nation's wealthiest 1% would trade in their multi-millions for. For Superchunk, twelve years is a dream come true.
Their humble beginnings as a small-time Chapel Hill pop band in 1989 have, over the years, given way to next-big-thing status, major label bidding wars, and eight studio albums, several of which have become heralded as indie classics. Now in their 30s, the long-standing lineup of Mac McCaughan, guitarist Jim Wilbur, bassist Laura Ballance and drummer Jon Wurster is still making music with the same heart of their early records, even while time has begun to change them into a subtler incarnation of their former selves.
Signs of the new, more refined Superchunk first appeared on 1999's Jim O'Rourke-produced Come Pick Me Up with tracks like "Tiny Bombs" and "Hello Hawk." But they were just signs, as raucous, infectiously upbeat songs like "Good Dreams" and "June Showers" dominated the album with anthemic bliss. On Here's to Shutting Up, though, the once-tightly wound hyper heroes have foregone the distortion in lieu of smoothed-out balladry and reflective repose.
While often sung from the point of view of fictional characters, McCaughan's lyrics on Here's to Shutting Up often reveal his wist for days gone by. This is perhaps most notable in one of the album's rare rockers, "Out on the Wing," in which a person confides, "All the music that I love is out of date/ So take me to the place/ Where there's no such thing as taste," a sentiment most thirty-something ex-music fans can bitterly relate to. Several of these songs also dwell on young love and history, such as the subdued, pedal-steel-infused "Phone Sex," which addresses a teenager stood up for a date, and the despondent 7\xBD-minute-long "What Do You Look Forward To," where McCaughan recalls seeing "anticipation and a smile on the face of this girl/ And her mother through the glare on the glass of the windshield as they drove away."
But even though this album exhibits a softer, more melancholy side of Superchunk, a handful of old-school rockers fill the album out nicely. It's with one of these, the not-necessarily full-force, but nonetheless aggressive "Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama)," that the album's clear standout comes. Amidst a pounding rhythm section, McCaughan seems to deride art schools more than that classic time-wasting high school elective with lines like, "Why so serious/ When it's only your life that's at stake/ Why so serious/ When your life is the art that you make," and, "So shit in a can but your art is not free." Elsewhere, the almost Guided by Voices-length slab of raging guitars and crashing drum fills, "Rainy Streets," provides some early relief from the album's pensive meditations.
Producer Brian Paulson, who worked with the band on 1993's Foolish, is back behind the decks for Here's to Shutting Up, and despite the band's maturing songcraft, his recording techniques give the record more of a classic Superchunk feel. Jim O'Rourke may have added some meaty soundwork to Come Pick Me Up, but Paulson seems more comfortable with the guys, mixing Mac McCaughan's still-boyish tenor amongst the instrumentation rather than up in your face. It's a seemingly small touch, but an unexpected one, and it makes all the difference in the album's long-term listenability.
Of course, at the end of the day, Here's to Shutting Up isn't anything spectacular. The new direction of these songs seems logical enough, and will likely sit well with longtime fans who are, by now, also growing somewhat less excitable. Still, you can't help but miss the youthful ambition of Superchunk's glory days, when they seemed so relevant shouting out simple songs of love and boredom, and blared constantly from college stations across the country. On the other hand, twelve years is a long time to hold a job. It's just nice to see that they're still inspired by what they do.
