Stream: Superchunk, ‘What a Time to Be Alive’

Kevin Bronson on November 9th, 2017

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In general terms, Superchunk’s 2013 album “I Hate Music” dealt with aging. We thought of it as the Big Question “Am I too old for this sh*t?” posed by a band that clearly was not. This week, the indie heroes returned sounding even more invigorated … because there’s nothing like an ideological adversary to get the blood pumping.

The quartet — Mac McCaughan, Jim Wilbur, Jon Wurster and Laura Ballance — unveiled the title track to “What a Time to Be Alive,” their first album in four-plus years, arriving Feb. 16. Says McCaughan: “The album is about a lot of things of course but mainly dealing with anxiety and worse in the face of incipient authoritarianism.” No surprise, “What a Time” was written mainly between November 2016 and February 2017, “about a pretty dire and depressing situation,” McCaughan says, adding that it is “hopefully not a record that is dire and depressing to listen to.”

Guests on the album include Sabrina Ellis (A Giant Dog, Sweet Spirit), Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee), Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields), Skylar Gudasz and David Bazan. “Part of that was wanting a feeling of community,” McCaughan says. “I think that’s important to not be completely bummed out about everything all the time.”

||| Stream: “What a Time to Be Alive”