Favorite Albums: 2000-2004
40. Superchunk, Here’s To Shutting Up
Original position on my Stylus ballot: #47
The details on this album were so specific and familiar to me when it dropped in 2001 that I wondered if I wasn’t the only guy in a long-distance relationship with an artist/aerospace engineer who regularly had to travel to Florida. Stepping back, I know touring rock groups have their fair share of plane flights and adventures in bohemia as well. That’s one reason I’m comfortable with calling Shutting Up a high-water mark for the group and not just an arbitrary memento of my own late-collegiate/post-collegiate adventures.
Another is the tunes! Jim O’Rourke (who produced 1999’s Come Pick Me Up - their real Here Comes The Strings) must be the anti-“Mutt” Lange: while he broadens the sound of the bands he produces, they seem more confident and relaxed with the new palette once he’s gone. The yearning “Phone Sex” earns its steel guitar climax and even familiar rockers like “Rainy Streets” and “Out On The Wing” are now peppered with keyboards hooks and whatnot. There are two reasons not to believe this is their best full-length: a) Mac’s increasingly effete vocals make you want to die and b) your big college relationship was already soundtracked by an earlier album.
