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.
Mac: New Yorker writer David Grann ventures into the Amazon in order to tell the story of Percy Fawcett, a British explorer who disappeared in 1925 on his hunt for the Lost City of Z, a possibly mythical (you’ll have to read the book) civilization deep in the jungle. Gramm weaves Fawcett’s story in with the story of the Age of Exploration and the Amazon jungle itself, along with his own modern travails. We’ve toured in Brazil and there were times when we felt like we might be in some danger of electrocuting ourselves onstage at 3 a.m. in some dicey bootleg venue, but this stuff is insane.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzw9IIhzvW4
