Send "Superchunk " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 In a year when its peers have made some valiant comebacks, and at a time when young upstarts directly or indirectly inspired by its old-school sound are spearheading a spirited punk-pop revival, leave it to Superchunk to show ‘em all how things are done. Returning with Majesty Shredding, their first full-length release in almost a decade, the underground legends don’t waste any time proving that they haven’t lost a single step, front-loading the album with its most propulsive number “Digging for Something” at the top of the track list. As if to make it clear the quartet isn’t simply going through the motions, the opener pulls out all the stops, with pounding rhythms, relentless riffs, and lead singer Mac McCaughan holding nothing back in his vocals, offering up his trademark out-of-tune falsetto yelps. But before you get a chance to catch your breath, the group launches into more of its prototypical power-punk on “My Gap Feels Weird”, its bashed-up bass and drums interplay hearkening back to indie anthems that have stood the test of time. Combine that with McCaughan’s indie outsider lyrics (“Here is a song for the kids down on the corner/With a look that tells you/You don’t even know them/And you never will”) and you have Superchunk at its most bruising and most catchy.Though you wouldn’t know it from that unmistakable Superchunk sound ringing in your ears, a lot has changed for the fortunes of indie rock’s most reliable band in the nine years since its last album, Here’s to Shutting Up. More specifically, Merge Records, founded by band leaders McCaughan and Laura Ballance, has become a taste-making cultural force building itself up the old fashioned way over time, hitting the jackpot this year with three Billboard Top Ten releases by Spoon, She & Him, and Arcade Fire. Whereas Superchunk and Merge had always given so many young up-and-comers the time, space, and cred to grow, hopefully good karma might just come full circle for the veteran band this time around, with the label’s high profile giving its signature act a chance to reap the residual benefits of popular success to go with its long-established critical acclaim. If that’s the case, Majesty Shredding makes a strong case for Superchunk, no matter if it’s to a new generation of would-be fans or as a welcome reintroduction to long-time followers. While the album is a complete piece in and of itself, it also works like a best-of that showcases the band’s go-to moves, full of streamlined punch-packing punk-pop that has no problem keeping up either with Superchunk’s best material or the up-and-comers who’ve stolen a few tricks from Chapel Hill’s finest. If anything, those who had harped that Superchunk had mellowed out when it ascended to elder statesmen status in the late ‘90s won’t find much to gripe with on Majesty Shredding. From the first few tracks on, Superchunk’s pogo-pop pretty much keeps its bounce through the album’s 11 tracks, slowing things up occasionally to save itself to come back even harder. “Crossed Wires” is a perpetual motion pop tune generated by a finely-tuned guitar-bass-drums machine, while “Slow Drip” is anything but what the title connotes, kicking into action with a squeal of feedback and drummer Jon Wurster’s primal banging....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| My first listen of Superchunk’s new album in nine years, Majesty Shredding, incited a feeling best described as moral outrage, a feeling completely out of proportion with what what an indie rock album warranted. Shredding isn’t an archival recording of S.S. marching songs, so why was I so offended on a moral/aesthetic level? This first reaction is interesting to examine because I think it’s more telling than my eventual stance — I enjoy the album. Not as much as their others, and on the whole, I think it’s more disposable, less personal, more broad than their other work, but still enjoyable. In my review of their No Pocky for Kitty and On the Mouth reissues, I wrote that Superchunk’s fantastic hooks — both the vocal and instrumental variety — set them apart and that Mac is an overly earnest lyric writer, a strategy that, while sometimes leading to silliness, often works because he’ll hit on real, affecting emotional truths. And what carries the band through the sillier lyrics is their incredibly ability to write a hook that not simply distracts the listeners, but that tends to infuse those silly moments with true emotion. Superchunk is essentially a band incredibly skilled at merging emotional honesty with a gut-level pop sensibility, hitting the listener on every level — lizard brain and rational consciousness. While I like all of their albums, my real wheelhouse is Foolish to Come Pick Me Up (though I appreciate and enjoy where they were going on Here’s to Shutting Up). But in that span of albums, they took the energy and effusiveness of their earlier albums and married to a more dynamic quality. Jon Wurster’s drumming became more interesting without ever giving up its power, the hooks became more complicated without ever giving up their catchiness, and there wasn’t a reliance on power chords to drive the songs. McCaughn became comfortable opening up and being more honest, and in general, this run of albums is strong from start to finish. When Majesty Shredding was announced, I was elated. Superchunk are one of my favorite bands for the above reasons. The musical landscape is filled with mostly mediocre songwriting, irritating and frustratingly tiresome chord progressions, and generally a background mood of tedium that lies behind Myspace and Soundcloud and Bandcamp, so I look especially to this kind of music to do something for me, to break through the logical layers of rationality, so I can say, “Oh, right, that’s what emotions are.” So in my mind, a new Superchunk album was a chance for a new or a re- articulation....full text |
| Avclub |
| When people say that an album is a return a form, what they often really mean is that it’s better than the string of mediocrity that preceded it. But in the case of Superchunk’s Majesty Shredding, the band’s ninth studio disc and first since 2001, the influential Chapel Hill quartet really has rediscovered the spark that made its output from the first half of the ’90s such an important part of the indie-rock canon. After mellowing out around the turn of the millennium, Superchunk has used its nine years off to put the pogo back into its step, aided by a more concise writing and recording process that echoed the band’s early days. The result is 42 minutes of delicious distortion and fountain-of-youth fun, opening with sing-along “oh oh oh”s in the chorus of “Digging For Something” and the equally exuberant “My Gap Feels Weird,” which serves as a reminder of where some of those second-wave emo acts got their ideas. Majesty Shredding lives up to its name and doesn’t waste much time catching its breath, and along the way Superchunk delivers something that used to be expected of the band: an album on which every song sounds as inspired as the next one. Entering its third decade, the only thing Superchunk had left to prove was that it wasn’t fading away. It does that here with style: As frontman Mac McCaughan sings halfway through Majesty Shredding, he’s stopped sinking and swimming and learned to surf....full text |
Superchunk lyrics
|
| |||||||||||||
