Providing the proper context for a baggage-heavy project like Portastatic is tricky, especially without launching into some kind of perverse, indie rock version of The $10,000 Pyramid, twitching in a plastic seat and frantically hollering buzzwords: Superchunk frontman! Co-owner of Merge Records! Tropicalia! Chapel Hill! Canadian film soundtrack! Yo La Tengo! But the peripheral associations that inevitably infuse any discussion of a Portastatic record (this being Portastatic's fifth full-length, and first in six years) are often the least interesting parts.
The brainchild of multi-tasking Mac McCaughan, Portastatic is pretty much a one-man show, but McCaughan has invited a host of equally talented co-conspirators to pitch in: Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney, Quasi), Tony Crow (Lambchop), and Margaret White (Sparklehorse, North Elementary) all contribute their respective bits to the record's clever, synth-punched pop/rock. The Summer of the Shark flirts with acoustic nuance ("Oh Come Down"), fuzzy guitar assaults ("Windy Village"), and rhythmic electric grooves ("Through a Rainy Lens"); McCaughan hops styles relentlessly, but rather than feeling chaotic or disorganized, The Summer of the Shark has the internal coherence of an expertly assembled mixtape. The narrative and stylistic lines running from song to song might not be instantly visible, but they're certainly present.
That McCaughan wrote most of these songs on guitar is obvious, and The Summer of the Shark is a noticeable departure from 1997's less six-stringed The Nature of Sap. The album was recorded on \xBD-inch eight-track tape at McCaughan's home studio (his brother Matthew plays drums on half the tracks), but it's hardly lo-fi scrambling. Though it may not quite reach the peaks of 1997's The Nature of Sap, its polish and expert production make it Portastatic's most diverse and accomplished work to date.
The excellent "Swimming Through Tires" opens with spare piano chords and an echoing assortment of clanks, clatters, and high-pitched bings, like a sack of forks upended over a snare drum; when McCaughan's doubled and harmonized voice finally pipes up, it's heavy with studied desperation, promising, "I will be with you when I am able." Soon, trombone and bowed bass slither in and curl up at the foot of the bed: the result is both comforting and oddly resigned. "Oh Come Down", which Mac breathily coos with Janet Weiss, is a perfectly formed pop cupcake, full of resonant acoustic guitar picking and popping drums, a vigorous, gluey bassline filling in holes as necessary. When Mac goes electric nearly four minutes in, the subsequent solo is a welcome (if anachronistic) freakout, his curious guitar syntax all the more appealing for the contrast and tension it provides. Album closer "Hey Salty" lets McCaughan show off his quirky, nasal falsetto and penchant for loud/quiet/loud structure; it also sees McCaughan heartily insisting, perhaps against instinct, that "it's okay."
There are definite themes embedded here. While he's not exactly coming on up to The Rising, McCaughan does (explicitly) address the events of September 11th on The Summer of the Shark: "I do not need another gap in my life/ When there's teeth missing in the sky downtown," he laments in "Chesapeake", before admitting, in "In the Lines", "Now everyone hangs flags out their window/ I've got a white towel." Superchunk was scheduled to perform-- as part of a Merge showcase for CMJ-- in downtown Manhattan on September 14th and, in the days directly following the attack, McCaughan nobly chose to tackle the 700-mile drive from North Carolina to New York City (passing a cracked, still-smoking Pentagon) to perform his scheduled solo set alongside The Clean, Ladybug Transistor, former Bricks bandmate Laura Cantrell, and some stranded Saddle Creekers.
Released nearly eighteen months later, The Summer of the Shark is, at least lyrically, still heavy with the kind of misdirected melancholy that marked the immediate wake of the attacks. Even the record's title is seeped in subtext: in August 2001, Time Magazine ran a (characteristically) hyperbolic cover story, complete with pithy, newsstand-worthy headline: Summer of the Shark. Weeks earlier, an eight-year old boy had been brutally mauled by a bull shark while swimming off the coast of Pensacola, Florida-- the incident, unprovoked and tragic, kicked off an avalanche of sensationalistic journalism, as reporters donned wetsuits and began lurid, stupid investigations of man-eating fish. As a catchphrase, "Summer of the Shark" quickly went ubiquitous.
Less than a month later, empty proclamations like "Summer of the Shark" functioned symbolically, indicative of a now-obsolete era in which a bored press had the liberty of transforming random, isolated incidents into certifiable trends. After the unprecedented events of September 11th, worry over aggressive sea creatures seemed frivolous, at best, and killer sharks slipped back into screenplays and Panama City nightmares. Journalists scurried back into blue blazers. It's an appropriate title for a record so rich in contrast. McCaughan layers distressed, despondent lyrics over addictive melodies without pause-- capturing both some of our innocence and some of our loss.
