It's New To Me: Foolish by Superchunk (1994)

Photo of ice hockey goalie by Art Rickerby, published in LIFE Magazine, 1962

Like many of the great minds of our era, I used to watch a lot of Beavis & Butthead. And not just for its post-modernist dialectic dialogue, Zen-like pacing, and faux-transgressive witticisms - I liked the music videos they showed between the plot-driven segments. Mike Judge seemed to find a good balance of bad videos for our heroes to make fun of and videos for good or interesting songs that would allow Beavis and Butthead to riff on random subjects. In 1993, I saw the video for Superchunk's "Package Thief" on Beavis & Butthead and took an immediate liking to it. I think I was already familiar with who Superchunk were - I knew about the Chapel Hill music scene and all that, but I'd never heard any of their songs. I ran out and bought the album that contained "Package Thief" - On the Mouth.

On first listen, I was immediately irritated that the album had been mastered at a lower volume than other stuff I was listening to (this always caused problems when making mixtapes!) but once I had the volume cranked appropriately, the music really struck me. It had a fierce energy and enthusiasm to it, but it didn't rattle me unpleasantly the way my earlier experiences with punk rock had. Two guitars, bass, drums, and whining vocals dropped low in the mix - it was a strain of melodic punk that was new to me at the time. But when the follow-up to On the Mouth came out, I consciously avoided it. I'm not sure why, but I never bought Foolish. I bought the four Superchunk albums that followed, but I never gave Foolish a chance for some reason. I think I may have missed my chance to hear it the way it was meant to be experienced.

Listening to it now, I love Foolish, but I can't love it the way I would have when I was 19. Around the time of its recording, Superchunk almost imploded when frontman Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance ended a relationship that, based on the record it inspired, must have been an intense one. The resulting set of songs are raw-sounding and full of hurt, angst, and a crumbling sense of romanticism. Ballance created the album's bleak cover painting, depicting a glaring woman standing in a gray room, a dead rabbit hanging from a noose in the background.

One of the album's best songs is "The First Part", a song that seems at first to be about new love, but it soon becomes apparent that it is about looking back on the beginning of a relationship after it's ended. Mac chants "I have remembered these things before / Whispered phrases and emotions" - he's spent a lot of time thinking back to "the first part" and the feelings associated with it. And listen to Laura's growling bass during the instrumental outro under the bickering guitars of Mac and Jim Wilbur. This intensity and mixing of melody and sentiment is what made Superchunk a great band. It makes my inner teenager want to break stuff.

"The First Part" by Superchunk