Superchunk was a flagship of ’90s indie rock, bursting onto the scene with “Slack Motherfucker,” still the most brilliant song about working at Kinko’s ever written, as typified in the exultant chorus “And I’m working, but I’m not working for you!” ‘Chunk’s self-titled debut helped put Matador Records on the map, and the founding of its own label Merge solidified the Chapel Hill, N.C., scene. Also the band still makes good music.
Superchunk rolls into Chicago on Friday for a show at the Metro.
“We just keep going,” marvels the group’s bassist, Laura Ballance. “As long as you keep making records and people still pay attention to them, there is going to be some relevance to it.”
The band originated in North Carolina 12 years ago, and the founding line-up consisting of Mac McCaughan, Laura Ballance, Jon Wurster and Jim Wilbur remains intact today. The band, says Ballance, owes its success mainly to “determination — and the fact that we all get along OK.
“We don’t really have high expectations,” she clarifies. “I think if we were expected to sell 250,000 records every time we put one out, we would have broken up by now because we would have been disappointed. But we never really expected that.”
Superchunk is a prototypical independent band; it releases its records through its own label, none of its songs have ever been in commercials or movies and it tours non-stop. Ballance thinks its independent ideology both helps and hurts the band.
“It definitely contributes to our stability. There’s nobody saying ‘You need to sell more records,’ or ‘Where’s the hit?’ because most major labels are about the bottom line when it comes down to it.”
Owning one’s own label “is really time consuming,” Ballance says, “even when I was writing songs for this record, I was so busy with Merge that I could hardly think about doing anything else. Although it is really better because we don’t have restrictions.”
If staunch independence has deprived Superchunk of a few extra fans, Ballance can live with it. “It seems worth it,” she muses. “We have been able to remain comfortable with what we’re doing, but Merge can’t afford to do huge ad campaigns to sell half a million records. I don’t regret it because I don’t know if we were even meant to sell that many records. We may not be cute enough or we may not know how to dance enough.”
Here’s to Shutting Up, Superchunk’s eighth album, is its most subtle and diverse effort to date.
“It was a conscious decision to make at least some of the songs quieter and more sparse, although it didn’t end up that sparse despite what our original intentions were,” Ballance admits.
The first single, “Late Century Dream,” is a piece of pop perfection straight from Brian Wilson’s playbook. Some longtime fans have resisted this evolution, but Ballance rests assured.
“If you don’t like it, you don’t like it,” she reasons. “We’re not going to stay the same. I think evolving has helped us survive because it keeps us from being bored. Why bother to buy a new record if it sounds like the last five?”
Superchunk plays the Metro Friday as part of their tour. “We’re playing a lot of old songs,” Ballance says, “although half the set is from the new record. As a result the overall set tends to be a little more quiet.”
Ballance reveals no definite plan for Superchunk’s future. “We’ll finish the tour then take some time off,” she says. “I imagine we will go in the same diverse direction of this record. I can’t see us going backwards.” nyou
