IN REVIEW: Superchunk - "What a Time To Be Alive"

It seems like a lifetime ago, but Superchunk were once sullenly riding into the sunset. Here's to Shutting Up, released just a week after 9/11, saw the indie rockers soften their sound and mostly eschew their scrappy roots for pensive and emo-tinged songs of maturity. It was received well enough, but there was a sense of finality to it, a sigh of concession after over a decade of building a small, devoted fan base and yet not making their mark to the extent of their brasher, angrier contemporaries.

Then, nearly a decade later, they returned with a new record that was no altered beast or contrived nostalgia grab, rather an assured and triumphant resumption of services. Majesty Shredding was followed three years later by I Hate Music, a darker shade for the band that tackled both mortality and music itself (the main takeaway being that, as many memories are made with music, it can't bring back the ones we've lost). Since then, through the occasional show and/or single, we've been reminded of Superchunk's presence but there's been no pressing need for them to get back on the horse and put out a new album; Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance have been busy running Merge Records, and one can't expect a band to put business and family life on hold for the constant record/tour cycle that's required of many bands in this day and age. So, long gaps between Superchunk albums aren't just excusable, they're expected.

Now, you'd be fair in assuming that a band of nearly thirty years with increased duties and a slower trickling output might be back in that same turn of the century head space, ready to hang it up and move on with their full lives. Suffice to say that, if Superchunk are planning to say goodbye (read: there are no announced plans of this, I'm just playing devil's advocate), they're doing so on the most dizzying of high notes.

Throughout their original '90s run, Superchunk were always influenced by punk but rarely matched the message to the music; now, in Trump's America, this band is more full of vitriol than they've ever been before. Though this can technically be called a sensible development when paired with the occasional bitterness of I Hate Music, What a Time To Be Alive marks a sharp turn into the political, a neighborhood that Superchunk have always noticed outside of the car window but never actually stopped to visit until now.

While McCaughan's lyrics carefully avoid specific callouts (so as to lend the words meaning long after Trump leaves office), they bear a weight and fury that definitely speaks to the times; the rising tide of deceit and hatred is addressed passionately and with urgency, and the music follows suit. What a Time To Be Alive is a quicker, louder and angrier record than any of us could have predicted; that's not to say it's a wall-to-wall punk ragefest, but it's certainly designed to be as direct as possible in its intent. The 11 songs scream by in 32 minutes, making it Superchunk's shortest and most concise record since their debut.

If that feels like a band coming around full circle, well, it is and it isn't. Superchunk in 1990 made indifference their calling card with the slacker rallying cry of breakthrough single Slack Motherfucker ("I'm working, but I'm not working for you!"); contrasted with lines like "Fight me / I don't like to get hit but fight me!" (from this album's All for You), there's a stark shift from observation to action. It's the music that's the most effective throwback, though, again hearkening back to the punk records that inspired the band early on. This is made musically obvious with breakneck-paced tunes Lost My Brain and Cloud of Hate, and spelled out on Reagan Youth, the blistering ode to the New York punk band's early run. "Reagan Youth taught you how to feel," McCaughan howls, "Reagan Youth showed you what was real."

This tribute is the crux of the album in my opinion, as though Superchunk felt a duty to translate that spirit for 2018; as such, What a Time To Be Alive sifts through all the fake news and political posturing, cutting to the tension and anxiety of a nation and offering no presumptuous or pretentious solutions but rather invoking the listener to find their own voice and speak their own truth (as hammered home on closing track Black Thread, the rare mid-tempo track that closes the record). If this album turns out to be the harbinger of a new wave of "politically charged" rock music that was last prominent as George W. Bush was starting his second term, then the bands that follow in Superchunk's footsteps have seriously got their work cut out for them.

February 16, 2018 • Merge
Highlights What a Time To Be Alive • Break the Glass • Black Thread