Superchunk

Indoor Living (Merge)
by Jamie Kiffel

Wednesday afternoon, locked inside the house without a car, you turn up the television to the drone of the fifth hour of Charles In Charge reruns, hook up your dusty Stratocaster, begin to strum and bang your head into the wall in time to your lost expectation that anyone but a telephone solicitor will ever again break up the stretch of monotony your life has become. This is the emotion at the soul of Superchunk’s Indoor Living. Mac McCaughan’s slightly falsetto, river-of-angst vocals communicate suburban teen melancholy through a long, slow, dissonant wash reminiscent of empty classrooms and aimless road trips. Confined pleas, such as “Will I ever see you in the parking lot?” leave one convinced that the singer has seen the plane fly over Fantasy Island one too many times to retain a shred of hope of its ever landing. Still, the disc’s final track, “Martinis on the Roof,” provides an unexpected window of freedom at the end of the long, dark high school hallway: as the chords pick up into cheery pop, McCaughan sings of Chee-tos at 100 proof, as if we have pulled through to the long-awaited keg party that promises that teenage life is not all bad. For those whose Friday nights still involve long hours pounding on pinball machines in the back of Nathan’s, this recording may perfectly capture the mood.