Album Reviews
On their first album since Jon Wurster left the band and the rather disappointing ‘Wild Loneliness’, Superchunk dishes out ten tracks worth of power pop bliss that we can all use in our lives right about now.
Opener ‘Is It Making You Feel Something’ sets the tone. Big anthem, bummer lyrics, buzzing guitars and a chorus that begs to be sung along so we can forget just for a second that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It’s a formula the band has mastered years ago and one that still works to great effect. See also ‘No Hope’ and the jangly ‘Care Less’. Elsewhere, the upbeat ‘Stuck In A Dream’ - with a solo that would make J Mascis' head spin - is a pretty apt description of what we are all feeling like these days. But until we wake up, songs like this one are a pretty good way to spend the time.
The core trio of Mac McCaughan, Jim Wilbur, and Laura Ballance, with new drummer Laura King firmly locked in, sound reinvigorated on Songs In The Key Of Yikes. It’s nothing but big riffs, bigger melodies and a dogged determination to turn angst into anthems. Angsthems if you will bear with me.
Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, Songs in the Key of Yikes doesn’t wear out its welcome. It’s a brisk album that brims with urgency and energy and shows that three decades in, Superchunk still has what it takes.
Songs in the Key of Yikes tracklist:
- Is It Making You Feel Something
- Bruised Lung
- No Hope
- Care Less
- Climb the Walls
- Cue
- Everybody Dies
- Stuck in a Dream
- Train on Fire
- Some Green
Lacking the talent to actually play in a band, Tom decided he would write about bands instead. Turns out his writing skills are mediocre at best as well.
