Don’t call it a comeback, Superchunk‘s been here for years. The band members just haven’t been doing anything since the release of 2001’s stellar Here’s To Shutting Up. Well, not much together, anyway, apart from a few one-off gigs and the occasional single. Singer/guitarist Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance have their hands full running Merge Records and raising families (plus McCaughan has released a number of fine Portastatic records); drummer Jon Wurster has toured and/or hit the studio with the likes of Robert Pollard, the New Pornographers, Bob Mould and the Mountain Goats in between hilarious Facebook postings and Best Show On WFMU appearances; and while we’re not sure what guitarist Jim Wilbur has been up to, other than gigging with Portastatic, he probably has a lot on his plate, too. It’s a wonder the busy quartet was able to reconvene for the fine Majesty Shredding (Merge), a more-than-welcome return that’s accompanied by the band’s first full-on, albeit relatively brief, tour since 2001. Superchunk will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with McCaughan and Ballance.
Jon: If I’m not on the road or dressing down the players on my fantasy hockey team, chances are I’m watching a documentary. I can’t get enough of them, and I watch as many as four a day. Thanks to Netflix, I can instantly view streaming documentaries while safely ensconced in the safety of my bed or the bed of whomever’s house I’ve broken into. Here’s a smattering of recent favorites:
1. In August 1962, U.S. soldier James Dresnok walked across the DMZ and turned himself over to the North Korean army. Crossing The Line is the story of Dresnok’s painful childhood, defection, emergence as a national hero (due to appearances in propaganda films) and the improbable life he’s lived in North Korea for the last 38 years.
2. Quick, name a band that’s been active for 22 years, has sold more than a million albums with zero aboveground radio play and whose only remaining founding members are the bassist and drummer. Fellow Mountain Goat John Darnielle turned me onto Centuries Of Torment, a three-hour Cannibal Corpse documentary. You need no interest whatsoever in extreme music to get sucked into this often touching tale of a bunch of dudes from Buffalo who, in the words of drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, “have come together for a common goal: to play death metal music.”
3. Overnight: What happens when an unknown hot-head screenwriter/director/musician from Boston simultaneously lands a major motion picture deal and a major-label recording contract? Oh, it’s so much worse than you think.
Videos after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-dlNX4AxqM
