Superchunk: Press

Orlando Sentinel-Tribune '93
by Parry Gettelman

Naturally, I was crushed to learn that Superchunk drummer Jon did not really attend the Philadelphia School of Mime as had been indicated in his biography. "Johann (Jon) makes up so much stuff - just to confuse poor reporters like yourself," Superchunk singer-guitarist Mac said with a satisfied laugh. Well, who could blame Superchunk for wanting to bedevil the press a little? How else to avenge themselves for those Dinosaur Jr., Replacements and Nirvana comparisons - not to mention all the next-big-thing hype burbling up about Superchunk and the Chapel Hill, N.C., music scene. "It can be annoying or whatever - people seem to be looking for places to hype," Mac said by phone from Chapel Hill where the band formed some three years ago.

"It's not that they really like the music, but they want something else to write about." He hastened to add: "There are definitely good bands around here; I wouldn't deny that." Not exactly an effusive plug from the head of Chapel Hill's Merge Records. Mac's business partner is Laura, Superchunk's bass player. They started the label the same summer they started the band. (Superchunk will play the Station in Fern Park Thursday.) "We weren't even really a band yet, so the fourth thing we put out was a Superchunk single. We weren't even called Superchunk then; we were just called Chunk," Mac said. "When we first started out, putting out tapes and singles, there wasn't a real big plan. We just said, 'Let's see what happens,' that sort of thing." Neither "Chunk" nor "Superchunk" had any particular significance that the band will admit to - they just liked the sound of "Chunk," Mac said. Then another Chunk was discovered, and the band had to come up with something new but couldn't really think of anything. So they stuck a "Super" in front of the "Chunk." As for their own names, they just go by Mac, Laura, Jon and Jim (Jim's the other guitarist). "People don't really care about your last name, anyway," Mac said. "My last name is hard to spell."

Merge Records specializes in seven-inch singles. In the past, most of the bands were from the Chapel Hill area, but Merge has begun looking further afield. "Since we've been going on tour, recently, we meet bands in other places, or we'll play with a band that's really good," Mac said. After Superchunk encounters, New Zealand's the Renderers, Richmond's Coral and San Diego's Drive Like Jehu and Rocket From the Crypt, among others, have ended up on Merge. Mac and Laura recently had to take the big step of hiring an employee to help with label matters because Superchunk has been so successful. In addition to its singles on Merge, the band has released three albums on New York's hip Matador Records, winning raves from the finicky English weeklies as well as from The New York Times and other American publications.

The group has been touring extensively and just returned from "a whirlwind promo tour" of Europe. "It was really good," Mac said. "The last time we toured with Mudhoney, so we weren't really sure what type of audiences we'd get on our own." He said the stage-divers weren't as frantic when Superchunk headlined, but the audiences were large, loud and active. Superchunk is currently touring behind On the Mouth, another collection of pop tunes rendered less poppy by bracingly noisy guitars and Mac's teen-age-punk-band vocals. Individual phrases and sentences in the lyrics make sense, but it's hard to pull any precise meaning out of songs such as "For Tension" and "Swallow That" - which is fine with Mac, who hesitantly admitted to writing all the lyrics. "I just let people think what they want, figure it out," he said. "Certain words sound good; certain phrases sound good; and it's all pretty vague. They start out from certain ideas, images - every song is probably 'about' five or six different things."

Superchunk's last album was produced by alternative-rock superstar-of-the-boards Steve Albini - although the group and Albini left his name off the credits to avoid being lumped in with Albini's other projects. This time, the band co-produced with John Reis of Drive Like Jehu and Rocket From the Crypt. They liked the sound of the Rocket From the Crypt album on Cargo Records, so they went out to the same San Diego studio where Reis had recorded with his band. Superchunk recorded 1991's No Pocky for Kitty in three days, Mac said. For the new album, they took a leisurely six days. "It's getting longer and longer each time," Mac said. "We were still sort of rushed - not rushed, we like to do them fast, but six days seemed like a luxury to us."

Mac said the band went into the studio planning to approach some of the songs differently from in the past because they were slower or longer than previous tunes or they had more dynamic range. There is also more variety among the songs this time, he feels. "But it wasn't like we said, 'We've got to make a totally different record.' Those were the songs that we happened to write this year. It's not like all of a sudden, we really got into Eastern music this year, 'and that's why there are all those sitars on the record.' I work in a record store, and I'm always hearing things - it's not real conscious, where I say, 'I gotta make a record that sounds like other things I just heard.' " For instance, Mac is a John Coltrane fan, but you won't hear much of that in Superchunk. On the other hand, he expressed a fondness for "really straight stuff" such as the Chills and the Bats, and Superchunk definitely could pass for a member of that New Zealand contingent. "I take that as a compliment," Mac said. "We all listen to a lot of stuff from there."

One thing Mac emphatically doesn't like is the Blues Traveller-Phish-Spin Doctors grouping. "It doesn't help that most of the people who come to their shows seem to be sort of Deadheads who didn't get to see the Grateful Dead that week," Mac said. "They don't really sound like the Grateful Dead. . . . I don't know who grouped them all together, but they're hugely popular, all those bands. Spin Doctors, they're one of the most annoying things I've heard, and they're so huge. What is the appeal?"