Superchunk

Hey, if for some reason you’re reading this, and you used to read via RSS, please note you’ll have to delete the feed and re-add it after the server rebuild. Of course, if you tracked this via RSS, I don’t know how you would be seeing this in order to find this out. Because I also posted it on Bluesky, which seems like the only other place you’d find out about this post, and I told people to do that over there. So, I dunno. This is pointless. Everything about Five Songs is pointless. Let the yawning intentionless void consume you!

L’altra, “Slow as Cake”

Is cake slow? I don’t think of cake as a particularly slow food. I suppose it takes a while to pre-heat the oven, bake the thing, let it cool, and then decorate it. So…maybe they are slow. But they’re not what I think of when I think of slow food. Beyond the obvious molasses, I think of, say, smoking things as slow.

The band Cake isn’t really slow either.

They Might Be Giants, “I Love You For Psychological Reasons”

Another tune from the big Dial-a-Song year of 2015, when they revived the old service and kept it going every week. Most of those songs got retooled a bit and re-recorded for a later record, with this one later appearing on Phone Power. It’s a classic bouncy Linnell tune, the sort of song that I’ll never get tired of.

Duke Ellington, “Sophisticated Lady”

As I wrote down the title of this song here, I had a memory of someone with a deep voice singing “soooooo-phisticated” that I couldn’t immediately place. Took me a bit to figure out it was Mike Watt, and then a little bit after that to recall that it’s from fIREHOSE’s cover of Public Enemy’s “Sophisticated Bitch” from their Live Totem Pole EP. So, you know, that’s what Duke Ellington brings to mind for me.

Gift of Gab, “Rat Race”

You know a song is banging when I’m nodding this hard along with it, even just listening to it on one shitty earbud.

Wilco, “Either Way”

The opener of Sky Blue Sky, and it’s one of my very favorite Wilco songs. There’s that breezy organ in the background, the little chord change going into the chorus, there’s kind of a fakeout after the second chorus where he drags it out and it seems like it’s going to crescendo to a huge bit but turns into just a pleasant solo. It’s a bright, optimistic sounding song, but there’s so much subtlety to it, it rewards a close listen.

The Dillinger Escape Plan, “43% Burnt”

I dunno, I’m 100% burnt now!

Neutral Milk Hotel, “April 8th”

I learned about a podcast called Neutral Cider Hotel the other day, and I have to say, I was probably way more amused than I should have been.

Superchunk, “Break the Glass”

Despite being a huge fan of Superchunk from the release of No Pocky For Kitty, I never once managed to catch them in concert until the tour for this record, 26 years after I started listening to them. And you know what? It was a total delight. I was just entranced watching Mac do his thing up there. I wish I could have seen them more often, but at least I got there once.

Rancid, “Time Bomb”

I sincerely wish that Rancid made more songs like this. It’s just such fun! Who is against this? Other than Rancid, I mean.

Mudhoney, “No End In Sight”

Have we had a lot of Mudhoney recently? It seems like we have. I’m not going to check, though, that would be against the Mudhoney Creed. Which I just made up.

Anyway, not going to analyze this one too deep, this is just a pure ripper in the classic Mudhoney mode. I’ll shut up and you enjoy it.

Superchunk, “Mower”

Unlike with OutKast, I have a lot of trouble picking my favorite Superchunk album. No Pocky For Kitty was the first album I bought, and it’s top notch, and it’s a sentimental pick. Here’s Where The String Come In has Superchunk at their best blend of their energy and more mature songwriting, and it’s a fantastic record. And then there’s On The Mouth, today’s album, which is just rock solid back-to-front. I think it’s probably my most frequent pick, but I really do swap around quite a bit.

Gorilla Biscuits, “High Hopes”

Gorilla Biscuits were one of the most influential hardcore bands, and their self-titled record set the stage for Start Today, which inspired tons of followers. This song, from that self-titled record, is a good example of how they were still pretty raw, but you could really hear the potential. Because this is still pretty straight-forward, it’s aged pretty well.

Prefuse 73, “Expressing Views is Obviously Illegal”

The third Prefuse 73 record, Surrounded by Silence, found Scott Herren starting to really branch out from the micro-samples and glitchy stuff that really made his name. He had a bunch of guest rappers on the record and generally tried to broaden his sonic palette. That said, there were still plenty of tracks that sounded like his classic sound, like this one.

Arab Strap, “Flirt”

Folks, the streak of metal is over!

I wonder what proportion of my music library is various genres. I think just plain “rock” probably dominates, but I’d love to know what percentage is metal, rap, soul, ska, or whatever else. I wish I could trust the genre metadata on things.

Superchunk, “100,000 Fireflies”

This b-side comes to us from the “The Question Is How Fast” single. Superchunk took singles seriously from the beginning, all the way down to releasing actual 7" singles at a time when not many bands were doing that. As a result, their b-sides were always pretty good. Happily, they’ve done a good job of collecting these things together (this one makes it to Incidental Music: 91-95).

Superchunk, “Precision Auto”

Superchunk’s No Pocky For Kitty is one of the records that really busted up my listening habits and helped broaden my tastes. That sounds stupid for someone that listened to a fair bit of punk prior to this, but it was pretty much all California punk. At any rate, I adored that record, and had high hopes for the followup. This is how it started, and my head was blown clean off.