“I’m trying to care less,” Mac McCaughan sings nearly halfway through Songs in the Key of Yikes, the 13th album from indie-rock institution Superchunk. It happens not long after he’s led his bandmates through the careening “No Hope,” an attempt to rally spirits even when “every crushing night leads to another endless day.” Songs like these suggest that trying times are weighing heavily on the veteran rocker, a situation not without precedent in Superchunk’s recent history.
Songs in the Key of Yikes is the latest link in a chain that stretches back to Majesty Shredding, the 2010 album that brought the quartet back to action after an extended hiatus in the 2000s. Over the next few records, McCaughan engaged with a 21st century that had strayed far from the DIY ideals of the ’90s underground. Three decades after he and Laura Ballance formed Superchunk, they seemed consumed with current events in a way they never had in their youth: What a Time to Be Alive registered as a protest against the first Trump administration, Wild Loneliness channeled the angst of the pandemic.
The aftershocks of those two seismic events reverberate throughout Songs in the Key of Yikes, in which Superchunk return to guitars-bass-drums basics after the expansive textures of Wild Loneliness. Things have changed in the past three years. Jon Wurster, the drummer who came aboard for On the Mouth way back in 1993, left, replaced by Laura King. Without Wurster’s thunderous pulse, Superchunk conserve their energy, sticking to a mid-tempo chug across the album’s middle section, and favoring the occasional sprint over bouts of exasperated catharsis.
At times, bursts of velocity push the group toward a kind of transcendence, particularly when the spiky “Everybody Dies” is chased by the galvanizing gallop of “Stuck in a Dream.” The moments of speed also lend a sense of urgency to McCaughan’s nagging anxiety, which complements the barbed melodies and gnarled chords; every element suggests that he’s searching for a way outside of his head.
McCaughan spends much of Songs in the Key of Yikes climbing the walls, yelping about bruised lungs, collapsing dancefloors, and trains on fire—apocalyptic imagery that mirrors the nightmarish news. He ends the album, on “Some Green,” wondering if he “could be of use/Doing something less obtuse/Than turning all my rotten thoughts into perfume”; it’s a defeated counterpoint to the album’s opening rallying cry, “Is It Making You Feel Something,” which offers emotion as the best defense in an era when “fakes are faking everything that once made your poor heart sing.”
A fundamental tension propels Songs in the Key of Yikes: McCaughan’s head is full of worry, his heart yearns for shared expression. Since he’s playing with the group that’s provided him stability and sustenance throughout his adult life, the scales tip toward communion. A warm current flows through the album: It emanates from Superchunk’s inherent chemistry, a familiar sound that’s freshened by presence of King and deepened by the acceptance of change. They may rail against the ills of the modern age, but they neither ignore the darkness nor act younger than their years. They continue to find nourishment in flinty punk and prickly power pop, the sonic signatures they’ve developed over the years. Their shared enthusiasm remains infectious.
