Best of 2010: #5 Superchunk - Majesty Shredding

You would have to be crazy to expect much, an “indie rock” band, though indie rock seemed to have left this sound some time ago, from the 90’s putting out an album of original material nearly a decade since their last release. There are piles of records released by bands in similar positions and none of them scratch the surface of how good this is. This year Superchunk made an album that was not only “good considering” it was just great regardless of context. A record that could potentially be the best of an excellent career.

I feel so bad for those few voices(fewer and fewer every year), who when Weezer put out a record they say things like “return to form” and “best since…” and every year what they get is a series of more confounding choices from a band that barely resembles the one these fans fell in love with so many years ago. Superchunk’s triumph made me feel worse for them this year. What they’ve done here is come back as an idealized version of themselves. The hard rocking urgency of their early albums, the catchy immediacy of their later 90’s albums, a slight nod the wider sonic palette of their last record(the under appreciated Here’s To Shutting Up), it’s all here. They’ve given fans a record they definitely didn’t expect and didn’t realize they needed.

Majesty Shredding is pop-punk for adults without sacrificing any of the energy and scrappiness the genre requires. Every song has “best song on the album” potential. “Digging For Something,” “My Gap Feels Weird,” “Crossed Wires,” “Winter Games,” listing these songs reads to me like a brand new greatest hits package. If you know someone who excitedly downloaded and was let down by Hurley this year, Majesty Shredding is the Christmas gift you should, nay must, buy them.

Kim's Underground on St. Mark's is Closing!

How sad. I always loved that I could bounce between Kim's and Other Music to check pricing and just general record availability. Now where will I browse when I decide I want $1 pizza for lunch!

I went today, everything is 30% off, got The Unblinking Ear's record of the year Celebration by Thomas Function, Portishead's Third, and a Jonathan Richman 7" that is recent and probably crappy but I really liked the song title("You can have a cell phone that's ok but not me").

God Save The Clientele; Owl Album Art

God Save the Clientele is amongst the albums I'm most eagerly awaiting this year. It's poised to be a shift in tone (if not overall sound) for the melancholy scots and I'm thrilled that they are streaming two songs (both very good) on their MySpace Page. One is the comparitively jolly "Bookshop Casanova," basically the happiest sounding thing the band has ever put it's imprint on. The other track is the schmaltzy and slow(in a good way) "Nothing But Sunshine". You'll be surprised (or maybe you pay as much attention to advance buzz for Merge releases as I do and you won't be surprised at all) to find that title is not ironic.

What the album also has is a lovely album cover featuring an owl(above). Owl's seem to be following me everywhere in the past year. I'm particularly fond of them being on Album covers. As a Result I've decided to post an owl album cover galery(Special thanks to opfer who posted a list of albums with owls on the cover here), Enjoy:












It was quite difficult finding a big enough jpeg of this album art, I may be the first person publishing a sizeable version. Lucky me!