Chapel Hill Indie Group Superchunk Prove Their Worth As Era Defining Rockers As They Play To Packed House At Thalia Hall

Jul 13, 2023 admin_bitlc Features, Music News, Reviews 0

By Christopher David

With each passing year and each subsequent tour, the heaviest-hitters of the 1990s become more and more apparent as the bands of the alt-rock era hit thirty years in the game. Such is the case with Chapel Hill indie rockers Superchunk, whose landmark album On the Mouth hits the big three-O this year. And in their Thalia Hall stop on Sunday to kick off a string of dates celebrating that album, they proved—once again—why the ‘Chunk might just be the most important and enduring rock band of that era.’

Though frontman Mac McCaughan and guitarist Jim Wilbur are now the only original members (bassist Laura Ballance no longer performs live and drummer Jon Wurster announced his departure from the band in February), bassist and Chicago native Jason Narducy has been with the band onstage now for quite a few years, and drummer Michael Benjamin Lerner (of alt-popsters Telekinesis) fit in just perfectly as the band tore through a long set of deep cuts. On the Mouth—the moment at which Superchunk really began to hone their hooks and shape what became the heart of their sound—was represented in its near-entirety, with a four-song set at the beginning and album/set-closer “The Only Piece That You Get” being performed for the first time since 1994. In between, they delivered anthemic singalongs like the timeless “Slack Motherfucker” and “The Question is How Fast,” along with a few cuts from their most recent album, 2022’s Wild Loneliness.

“1993 was fun and everything,” Mac grinned, finishing off a slate of Mouth tunes. “But let’s move on.” “On the Floor,” one of Loneliness’s hallmark tunes, sounded like it could have belonged to the same group of songs, a line that Superchunk has always been able to effortlessly walk: merging the old with the new. At any Superchunk show, you’re liable to hear literally anything from the band’s seemingly bottomless catalog of tunes, and they will all sound perfect together even though they may have come from albums that differ radically in terms of production. It’s a trait few bands can tackle effectively—hell, it’s something a lot of bands never even attempt—but McCaughan has become a master of his craft and his style of songwriting; in many ways, he’s the Bruce Springsteen of his generation, and I mean that in the best of ways: always evolving, confident and comfortable in his band’s skin, happy to embrace the past, and busting ass on-stage as though it’s his band’s first gig. Deep cuts like “Water Wings” and “Kicked In” from 1994’s Foolish had the energy and panache of brand-new material, and by the time the band reached the encore and the pummeling “Skip Steps 1 & 3,” you’d have been hard-pressed to believe you were watching a band more than thirty years into an airtight career—a testament to Superchunk’s timeless approach to songwriting and tireless touring.