Majesty Shredding
*Majesty Shredding* is Superchunk’s first album since 2001 and they pick right up where they left off, namely with a power-chord blast at the beginning of “Digging for Something.” It’s good to have them back. Not that they’ve been idle. Band members Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance run indie stalwart Merge Records, the label they co-founded in 1989, and McCaughan has also released six (good!) albums as Portastatic, his solo project, over the past decade. The album is what you’d expect and hope for from Superchunk: driving dual guitars, pounding drums and bass, fun, clever lyrics, and McCaughan’s distinctive and impassioned voice over a dozen sharply crafted songs. Rockers like “My Gap Feels Weird,” “Crossed Wires,” and “Rope Light” make you want to immediately play them again and sing along. The mid-tempo gem “Fractures In Plaster,” which is so well suited to the melancholic side of McCaughan’s voice, is followed by the infectious anthem “Learned to Surf,” while both “Slow Drip” and “Winter Games” are classic Superchunk. *Majesty Shredding* is straight-forward power-pop perfection.
Nearly a decade since their last album, Superchunk crank out snarky bruised-romantic pop-punk anthems without any dip in energy level or quality control.
When people say that an album is a return a form, what they often really mean is that it’s better than the string of mediocrity that preceded it. But in the case of Superchunk’s Majesty Shredding, the band’s ninth studio disc and first since 2001, the influential Chapel Hill quartet really has rediscovered the spark…
Superchunk never broke up officially after the release of 2001’s Here’s to Shutting Up album.
Superchunk's return sees them hitting top form, reckons <strong>Tom Hughes</strong>
Superchunk - Majesty Shredding review: Alternative veterans return to remind us what pop-punk should sound like.