Superchunk bring Foolish 30-year anniversary celebrations to Perth

Having formed in North Carolina in 1989, Superchunk have been one of the most durable outfits in indie rock. Not only have they released 12 albums of their own, but band members Mac McCaughan and Laura Balance created Merge Records, which has released some of the greatest records of the past three and a half decades. Superchunk were a regular fixture in Australia during their earlier years, but the past decade has seen them focus on other priorities (COVID and a rogue president may not have assisted travel plans). With the 30th anniversary of their game-changing album Foolish, Superchunk return for a tour that will have plenty of favourites from all of their catalogue with a heavy dose of tracks from Foolish thrown in for good measure. CHRIS HAVERCROFT spoke to frontman Mac McCaughan ahead of Superchunk’s show at the Rosemount Hotel on Tuesday, December 10.

Was the eastern states tour with Neutral Milk Hotel and M. Ward in 2013 the last time you were in Australia?

Yeah, which is crazy. That it’s been 11 years since we were down there.

You used to be regular visitors to Australia. I guess the world’s changed a fair bit in that time, though.

I mean, it’s true. Like we, we feel lucky that we’ve been there as many times as we have. But don’t get me wrong; 11 years is too long.

Despite the lack of shows in Australia, it has been a very active period for the band since then. There have been quite a few records and a box set of rarities.

We’ve been busy since then for sure. 2010 was kind of the beginning of this, I guess you would say, the second half of our trajectory after taking a few years off after Here’s To Shutting Up. We did Majesty Shredding in 2010. And then I Hate Music is what we were touring for when we came over with Neutral Milk Hotel and M. Ward in 2013. It’s been pretty steady since then. I’ve done a couple of solo records in there too, but Superchunk has definitely been the focus.

With all that newer music, is it weird to now be touring with a focus on Foolish—a record that is now 30 years old?

No, it’s pretty fun and interesting actually, because, you know, we put out Wild Loneliness a couple of years ago, a record that we made during the pandemic. And, oddly enough, recording Wild Loneliness here at home because of restrictions and everything was informed by making Acoustic Foolish, which was a record we did on the 25th anniversary of Foolish where we re-recorded the whole album acoustically, with some string arrangements and things like that.

And that informed Wild Loneliness. So now that it’s the 30th anniversary of Foolish, it’s been really fun to go back to playing the Foolish songs as they were originally played. You know, of course, there are some of the songs from Foolishwe play all the time anyway, but there’s plenty on that record that just fall out of the set list, you know, because they’re just the less favourite songs or whatever, and we have to relearn them in order to play them. So having an excuse to relearn some of these songs has been fun, and it’s made the setlist really interesting.

You’ve decided to go with the songs that you want to play from Foolish. Instead of doing the entire album from start to finish like other bands tend to do?

Yeah, you know, we did a tour for an anniversary of a record a couple of years ago for On The Mouth. There was one show where we played the whole album start to finish, but for the most part, with that record and with these Foolish dates, we’ve been playing a majority of the album, but sprinkled into the setlist with other songs from other albums.

As a fan, when I see a band… I went and saw Built To Spill play There’s Nothing Wrong With Love. That was pretty great, but for the most part I feel like knowing which song is coming next is a little predictable. We play a different set every night, in keeping with that spirit. You know we’re incorporating a lot of the Foolish album, but it’s still not going to be the same set every night because we’re mixing it in with songs from all our records.

I like the unpredictability of that and the chance that you get to hear some of those favourites from other records as well. And that allows us to take requests, and I don’t know, like I said, just throw in some kind of unexpected things.

When you were recording Foolish did you think it would be as enduring as it is? Did you feel it was a special record for Superchunk at the time?

I think that we knew it was different than our previous records, you know. As a band, I think most bands probably feel like all our records are different. You know which they are in some way, but with Foolish it was maybe more deliberate.

To show everyone, like, from the first note, which was like, you know, Like A Fool is the first song on the record, and it’s a very slow song. The guitars are clean-sounding. There’s a lot of space on it. You know, whereas in the past most of our songs have been just distorted guitars from start to finish, every inch of sonic space was densely filled with these guitars and feedback and everything.

So I think that it was like a deliberate thing to be like, “Hey, you know, like we’re doing something different here.” And it was taken that way, which was great. People really responded to it. It could have gone either way, I guess. But at the same time, when we go back to listen to it to, you know, work on songs for this tour and everything, it’s funny how much of the record is not that different from our other records. But you know the most well-known songs of Like A Fool or Driveway To Driveway certainly sound different than our first three albums up to that point.

Is Foolish Superchunk’s version of Rumors?

No, I would say not. I think that Foolish is probably more typical of a lot of records where people are writing about relationships. Now if John and Jim had been dating, and then they swapped with Laura and I somehow, like that would have been more of a Rumors situation, but no, it didn’t get that complicated really.

For a band that has had a very solid line-up for much of the time, there have been some changes over the past decade. How do you navigate that, and how have you found the right people to jump in?

There are challenges for sure. But it’s been really great recently. You know, Laura Balance hasn’t toured with the band for a while. Well, she didn’t come down to Australia with us last time. That was 11 years ago. That was around the time she retired from playing live, so she still plays on all the records, of course.

So it’s interesting ’cause we have a live line-up and a studio line-up and Jon Wurster retired from playing drums with us two years ago now. Laura King, who’s our drummer now, is amazing, and on this tour, we’ll have Betsy Wright playing bass, Betsy in Ex Hex, and she’s in a band called Bat Fangs with Laura, so they’ve played together a bunch.

They’re a great rhythm section and amazing people to be on tour with. Playing shows with them, frankly, is a real injection of energy into the band. At the merchandise table after the show, when we’re there talking to people and selling records and selling shirts and whatever you normally do after the show, you know, so many people come up and they’re like, Oh my gosh, like your new drummer, she is amazing. Is she coming out here to sign some records? And she’s like, I’m not on any records, but yeah, sure. I’ll come out to the merch table. So yeah, it’s been really fun.

Last time that Donald Trump was president, you responded with the album What A Time To Be Alive. Can we expect another album of anger and despair following the result of the recent presidential election?

It takes a lot of energy to make a record like that, and maybe not necessarily the healthiest energy, but you never know. I mean, we live in the world, you know, and the songs that we write are about living in the world.

I don’t think people do this so much anymore because I think the people that would have said this probably have stopped following us on social media or listening to our records. Some people were like, stick to music, I don’t want politics in my music. I’m like you live in society; you can’t get away from it. If someone’s trying to like hurt people that you love. Like, what, are you not gonna write a song about it?

I’m more worried this time around because of the people that he has around him. I feel like he’s had time to kind of like prepare this oligarchy, you know?

Your projects have been going long enough now that anniversaries keep coming up regularly. How do you juggle the anniversary shows for Superchunk with the anniversary celebrations for Merge Records?

I mean, they’re the same really, age-wise. So it all kind of tags together. We had a great festival this summer for Merge 35 with all the bands and people from all over the world coming to Carrboro, NC, to hang out and celebrate. But in fact, it’s quite convenient that they line up and that we started the band and label the same year, because then it’s easy to remember.

Is there any chance of bringing the Merge Records 40th on the road when it happens?

I mean, I would love to do that. That would be really, really fun. You know, if we could, I mean, we work with some bands from Australia; we could get Quivers and Cable Ties on a bill, you know. But I don’t know. I’m always up for trying stuff like that. I think what happens generally is that it takes so much energy to organise the festival here in North Carolina and get all the bands here that by the time we figured that out, we’re just like, yeah, we can’t take on another. We can’t take on a travelling show.

I’m looking forward to who we’re playing with on this tour. There are so many bands in Australia. I don’t even understand it. What’s in the water! We’re playing with some bands that we played with 32 years ago, actually, in the case of Smudge and The Meanies, and then some bands that we’ve never seen live before. So I’m looking forward to all that.

Last time we didn’t get to Perth, so it’s been a really long time since we’ve been out West, and we had a memorable time last time, so I’m looking forward to that.