Superchunk And Merge Records

     I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that the two most important people in the history of indie rock are Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance. To make my case, I present Exhibit A: they are the founding members of Superchunk and Exhibit B: they are the founders of Merge Records.
     Mac and Laura began Merge Records in 1990 to release music by their band Superchunk. Their first album featured the indie classic "Slack Motherfucker". It's an anthem for those of us who've come up through minimum wage retail jobs having to work with jerks. It includes the line, "I'm working, but I'm not working for you!" They followed this up with their classic album No Pocky For Kitty. The band was dormant for most of the 2000's while McCaughan focused on his other project, Portastatic. In 2010, they returned with the fantastic release, Majesty Shredding. The highlights here are "Digging For Something" and "Crossed Wires". The band made hilarious videos for each of these songs. "Digging For Something" has McCaughan reuniting Superchunk with all new members. When the rest of the band discovers what he's up to they go to the show and take over by the end of the song. In the video for "Crossed Wires", Ballance puts a camera on her cat and lets it out. We see cat's eye footage of her cat drinking and puking and knifing people and much more. At the end the cat returns and Ballance is disgusted by the footage. It's a riot. Superchunk have a new album coming out, but unfortunately Ballance won't be touring with them due to a hearing problem.

     I don't really need to make a case for Merge Records. The releases speak for themselves. If you check your CD shelves (or mp3 playlists) it's likely you have some of them. Arcade Fire. Archers Of Loaf. The Clean. Dinosaur Jr. David Kilgour. Bob Mould. The Mountain Goats. Neutral Milk Hotel. Robert Pollard. Redd Kross. Spoon. Teenage Fanclub. Telekinesis. They are reissuing All Hail West Texas by The Mountain Goats in July, which is awesome news. I will be buying that and posting about it. The label also has several buzzed about albums out now, such as, Mikal Cronin's MC II, the latest She & Him, Eleanor Friedberger's Personal Record and Telekinesis' Dormarion. Superchunk's new album, I Hate Music, comes out August 20th. Since I'm on the subject of record labels, here's my list of favorite labels as of this posting. Peace.

* Merge Records
* Matador Records
* Carpark Records
* Wichita Recordings
* Flying Nun
* 4AD
* Yep Roc
* Creation
* Warner
* Fat Possum