After returning with a pair of singles earlier this year, 90’s alternative figureheads Superchunk have now revealed their first new full-length album in more than five years, following 2013’s I Hate Music.
Titled What Time to Be Alive, the record will be dropping February 16 via the band’s own Merge Records. The record was apparently written between November 2016 and February 2017. It was recorded and mixed by Beau Sorenson, and also includes guest vocalist contributions from Katie Crutchfield, Stephin Merritt, Sabrina Ellis (A Giant Dog, Sweet Spirit), Skylar Gudasz, and David Bazan.
“There’s a lot to talk about right now that is occupying our minds, and it feels like a good time to yell about it,” bassist Laura Ballance told the AV Club. “It’s not a time when I think any artist can afford the luxury of staying politically neutral, in order to maintain their fanbase. I feel like what’s happening is more important than that.”
Though it was written during a highly political period, frontman Mac McCaughan makes sure to note that What a Time to Be Alive is distinctly not a political record.
“It implies that you are offering some solutions or that you’re writing a white paper,” said McCaughan. “Like, ‘Here’s what we should do about this.’ Where it’s really more about how do you be a person in the world when all this is going on and still have a life, and I think a lot of people are learning that.”
“The album is about a lot of things of course but mainly dealing with anxiety and worse in the face of incipient authoritarianism,” Mac McCaughan continued. “It’s a record about a pretty dire and depressing situation but hopefully not a record that is dire and depressing to listen to.”
Following the previously released “I Got Cut” and “Break the Glass,” the band have now shared a lyric video for the record’s title track. The clip features flowers slowly growing out of a skull over the course of the song, next to words that depict gory metaphors of depths and death over blaring guitar solos and shout-along choruses. As reliable as ever, Superchunk is back in full force.
Photo Credit: Demian Becerra
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