Superchunk - Here's to Shutting Up
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Music CD Cover
Artist: SuperchunkEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2001-09-18
Music Label: Merge Records
Soundtracks:
- Late-Century Dream
- Rainy Streets
- Phone Sex
- Florida's On Fire
- Out On The Wing
- The Animal Has Left Its Shell
- Act Surprised
- Art Class (for Yayoi Kusama)
- What Do You Look Forward To?
- Drool Collection
Free Music Notes for Here's to Shutting Up
Free Music Review: I believe some dead Greek guy said "comparison is odious."
Hit: 5 Stars
Considering the arc of Superchunk's career and the sheer volume of songs (most of them quite excellent) that they've recorded, it's no surprise that the sound and the energy of the band have changed over time -- no doubt paralleling their listening habits, life experiences, etc.
As young upstarts they delivered album after album of careening guitars and vocals strained to the point of cracking. Anthem after anthem, even when looked at objectively. As the flagship band of their own label (Merge, home to an indie-rockers dream roster of musicians -- Robert Pollard, Polvo, The Arcade Fire, The Buzzcocks, Camera Obscura, M. Ward, Spoon, Neutral Milk Hotel, need I go on?), they have every right to shatter their own mold. Which is what they do on "Here's To Shutting Up." Is the title a preemptive strike against critics who would diss them regardless of what they did? Many "mature" contemporary bands at this stage in their career are caught in the critical catch 22 -- they're either going to be accused of "not progressing" if they revisit their core "classic" sound, or they'll be accused of "going soft/jumping on bandwagons" if they experiment.
What's a band to do?
"Here's To Shutting Up" bares its pop teeth first and foremost with a collection of fluid, solidly written songs. Lyrics are a little more lighthearted this time out, though still littered with (most apparently) airplane disaster imagery. Considering the CDs release date of October 2001, this touches a pretty raw nerve in many listeners.
For my tastes, this trumps "Come Pick Me Up" -- lauded as a perfect album by many, though I find it contains the closest things to dud songs in the Superchunk canon. HTSU takes the lessons of CPMU and crafts them effortlessly into rough-hewn gems while still hearkening to the effortless punkishness that so often crops up on their B-sides (of all places).
Start here or finish here, but definitely put this in your stereo.
Here's to Shutting Up Poster
No longer the angsty early-twentysomethings of the Tossing Seeds era, Superchunk have been moving toward the "grownup" classification in age, if not in sound, for a good half decade. Come Pick Me Up, the group's 1999 album, found them heading there musically, too, but it's with Here's to Shutting Up that they've aced the growing-older-while-remaining-punk shtick. The band opens the album on an unabashedly adult-contemporary note with "Late-Century Dream," a midtempo tune full of percussion, strings, and vocal frills. They range through more mature territory, both musically and lyrically, in "Phone Sex," a pedal steel-accented tale of long-distance love in the age of planes, phones, and post-adolescent ennui. They paint a grim picture of life in the static, sweltering South in the blistering "Florida's on Fire."; And they venture into Tropicalia territory usually reserved for singer Mac McCaughan's other band, Portastatic, on "What Do You Look Forward To?," a reflection on the rigors of touring. There's not a song on the album that isn't wonderful, and most are even better. For you who loved Superchunk but felt it was nearing time to leave them, Shutting Up is just the album to renew your affections. --Sarah SternauAlternative Rock Music CDs
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