The Triangle has no shortage of indie-rock bands, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a group that’s had more of an effect on the local and national music scene than Chapel Hill mainstays Superchunk. Majesty Shredding is the band’s first album in nine years, and to celebrate its release, they’ll be playing a concert at the Nasher Museum of Art. Recess’ Andrew Kindman spoke to frontman—and Merge co-founder—Mac McCaughan about his band, his label and being a part of The Record.
First of all, I love Majesty Shredding, and I love its distinctive sound. How would you describe the difference between this and the rest of the Superchunk catalog?
I guess in some ways it’s definitely different from the last record and maybe has more similarities with the earlier records, but I definitely think it’s its own thing. I guess I would say it has a lot of the energy of the earlier records with maybe a slightly bigger sound. I don’t mean bigger in the sense of string sections and things like that. It has to do more with [recording] with Scott Solter at Overdub Lane where John Plymale is the assistant engineer. We’ve worked with John on some other things: Indoor Living, The Laughter Guns EP. I wanted to make sure the songs have a lot of energy. Frankly, we’ve been playing a few shows a year for the last few years, and we always have fun doing that. But at a certain point we want some new songs to play. One of the considerations when working on this record was, “let’s make a record that will be fun to play live and that people are going to want to see us play live.”
John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, who sings on Majesty Shredding’s opening track, is one of the latest additions to the Merge roster, alongside the Love Language. Two local bands—is that an accident?
As long as Merge has been around, we’ve looked locally as well as other places. When the label started, pretty much all of the records we were putting out were by local artists. And that’s not a new thing. It feels good to have a strong local presence on the label.
How would you say the local music scene has changed since Merge began?
For me, it’s kind of hard to analyze when you live here and you see people all the time and it’s happening all around you. Before we had Merge, there was a great scene here, and I think it’s maybe more diverse than it ever has been. There are maybe more venues than ever in the Triangle to go out and hear live music at. I think that really helps encourage people to go out and start bands.
Where do you think the scene is headed?
I’m not sure. I think one reason that Merge still exists is that we don’t ever try to predict the future.
You have some work associated with The Record, the new exhibit at the Nasher. How did you come to be involved in that?
I’ve been interested in contemporary art for a long time. Through Chloe [Seymore] and Harrison [Haynes, drummer of Les Savy Fav], who had Branch Gallery in Durham, I got to know Teka Selman, who was part of Branch as well, and her husband Trevor [Schoonmaker], who’s one of the curators at the Nasher. I remember talking to Trevor pretty early on about this show, The Record. He’s a music fan, obviously, and we talked pretty early on about ways that Merge, as a North Carolina label, could be involved in [the exhibit]. Xaviera had this idea to make an album of music paired with photographs that she took all over North Carolina. Once it became clear that there was going to be a vinyl component to that, [Merge] got involved. Because that’s one thing we do know how to do—make records. We were really excited to be able to collaborate with Xaviera, who is a great artist, and the Nasher, which is a great institution for Durham. We don’t get to do that sort of thing very often. Harrison and I did a song for the album, and then I wrote an essay that’s in the catalog for the show. So it’s exciting for me just to be involved in a show like that.
In your essay for the catalog, you discuss the early days of producing vinyl for you and your friends as an empowering activity. What drew you to that?
Even before we could produce it, it was exciting just knowing that it was around. Until I was 12 years old, I thought of a concert as something that I certainly wanted to go to, but it was most likely a Van Halen concert or something like that. That’s exciting in its own way, but once we started listening to college radio and finding out about punk rock and the hardcore scene around here, it’s much more powerful because it’s people your own age doing it and you can just become much more intimately involved with the music. Even if you’re just going to shows, you’re standing in a small club 10 feet from the Minutemen or someone like that. And once we found out about that, it was a whole different world.
On the subject of vinyl, Superchunk is re-releasing No Pocky for Kitty and On the Mouth on CD and LP. How’s that going?
The re-releases just came out. They did a great job remastering the record, and it’s exciting to hear them sounding good and to know that they are available, really. We didn’t do any bonus tracks or anything; we just wanted the records to stand on their own and sound as good as they could sound.
As part of the upcoming tour, Superchunk will perform on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, the band’s first televised performance in 15 years. Are you excited about that, and do you think it will attract more mainstream attention?
I’m excited about that. It’s a cool show. I mean, they have the Roots for a house band, which is awesome. It shows that they care about the musical aspect of what they’re doing. It’s not just an afterthought stuck on at the end of the show. But, how mainstream is the Fallon show? I don’t really know. I don’t look at the ratings or anything. But I think there are probably people who are watching late-night TV who don’t know what Superchunk is and they might see us and still not care what Superchunk is. But maybe some of them will be into it.
Superchunk performs at the Nasher Museum of Art tonight at 8:30 p.m. to celebrate the release of their new album, Majesty Shredding. Tickets are $12 for adults, $6 for Nasher Museum members and $5 for Duke students with I.D. Tickets are available through the Duke University Box Office at www.tickets.duke.edu.
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