The remastered and augmented edition of Indoor Living hits racks next week as the second installment commemorating Merge Records’ admirable 25th anniversary in the biz of quality music production. It also returns to print an LP that’s initial release inspired a diversity of reactions, from vociferous praise to the promulgation of the notion that Superchunk had outlived their usefulness and overstayed their welcome. The band is still alive and well 17 years later, and this reissue underscores that one of the most important elements in the evaluation of any worthy album is time.
Naturally, this fresh version of Indoor Living will serve a variety of functions; some will use it as an introduction while others will seize the occasion to get reacquainted with a disc they once knew and maybe even loved but somehow lost track of as the years passed by. Additionally, a sizable number of consumers will repurchase Indoor Living for the physical upgrade, many retiring terribly battered compact discs as younger fans jump at the chance to acquire a copy on sturdy 180gm vinyl.
In every instance, smart cookies. And for writer Anna Marie Cox, it allowed for a reconsideration of the record she reviewed in Spin magazine upon its first release. That might seem dissimilar to the other examples listed above, but what they all share, either now or at some point in the indefinite future, is a relationship to memory.
So please allow this humble reporter to add to the mountain of remembrance. To begin, I’ll make no attempt to obscure my belief that Superchunk is simply one of indie rock’s finest long-serving representatives. Self-deprecating yet driven and confident in a manner that can only derive from a healthy artistic ego, as their releases have amassed, the group has also been extremely cognizant over what exactly it is they do well.
Specifically, their forte is writing and executing an unusually high ratio of quality pop-rock. This shouldn’t suggest the band lacks in appealing forward-progression; initially defined by the influence of the punk/HC/’80s u-ground scene that spawned them, as Superchunk grew they importantly took inspiration from numerous indie contemporaries. These days they are one of the few acts that can convincingly and reliably manifest the sound of classicist post-Beatles pre-punk guitar-based pop-rock.
I’ll mention here that Indoor Living is the solitary Superchunk album I didn’t hear directly upon release. In fact, I didn’t even absorb its entirety until after I’d been grabbed (more like bear-hugged) by ‘99’s Come Pick Me Up. Upon finally checking it out, the ’97 effort didn’t immediately gel for me, and after a few weeks I was considerably less smitten with the whole than I was with its follow-up.
Indoor Living did hold a handful of cuts that instantly felt like classics, though; the emotional candor and solid mid-tempo heft of “Marquee,” the giddy power pop/post-HC merger of live staple “Nu Bruises,” the full-throttle anthemic roar of “European Medicine,” and the gorgeous melancholy of closer “Martinis on the Roof.” Plus, it was basically impossible for this jazzbo to not dig the bittersweet honesty of “Song for Marion Brown.”
But for me, Indoor Living ended up registering as a dry run for Come Pick Me Up, a disc I continue to rate amongst Superchunk’s most significant achievements. While I liked Indoor Living, I also considered it flawed, assessing the majority of the entries as too long, pinpointing “Watery Hands” as an obvious stab at writing a hit single, and ranking the production and broader instrumental palate as lesser than the brilliance of same found on Come Pick Me Up.
But looking back from this vantage point, Indoor Living, a record I could never resist giving seasonal re-inspections, now plays like the inaugural installment in Superchunk’s most underappreciated period. Arriving after the indie rock-mainstream honeymoon (roughly ’91-’95) had ended but long before the band had soldiered into an on-hiatus but occasional gig-playing/song-releasing and eventual full-comeback making survivor of the scene, it’s the first in a dandy three LP run, one that’s as important as any of the more celebrated items in their discography.
If the tunes felt longer (only two end before hitting the four-minute mark and three break five, though this was far from new territory) they also displayed the flowering of the group’s engagement with unabashed pop-rock songwriting; please see opener “Unbelievable Things” and the heavier but just as catchy following selection “Burn Last Sunday” for evidence.
The impulse continues through the assured riffs and rich falsetto vocals of “Marquee” to culminate with “Watery Hands.” Though I’ve no actual evidence it was an actual hit endeavor, in retrospect the track was deserving of some (sadly elusive) chart success. It’s not until “Nu Bruises” emerges that Superchunk slip into flailing pogo mode.
And I won’t deny that the presence of synthesizer on “Watery Hands” took a little getting used to (at the time I enjoyed the mid-section synth drop in “Marquee” a lot more), but in this case the instrument and the song are growers, both comprising a substantial part of the band’s jones for increased sonic texture. That itch essentially began with “Certain Stars,” the closer to ‘95’s Here’s Where the Strings Come In and climaxed with the exceptional “What Do You Look Forward To?” from ‘01’s Here’s to Shutting Up.
But with the very distinctive “Every Single Instinct,” Indoor Living directly foreshadows the ambitiousness of their next album; Mac’s falsetto is cranked up, the guitars are wiry and layered, and the whole thing is loose and drifting enough that I can’t actually imagine them playing it live. To a lesser extent the same is true of “Under Our Feet,” largely due to its deliberately (and endearingly) anti-climactic ending.
However, just the opposite applies to “Nu Bruises” “The Popular Music” and “European Medicine,” though only the first turns up on the set-list to the ’97 Duke University live show that accompanies this reissue and also comprises Vol. 8 in the group’s Clambakes series. It’s a fine performance, fittingly loose in front of a hometown crowd, sporting five Indoor Living cuts and a pair of nifty covers, namely “Younger Bums” by Big Dipper and “Bye Bye Kitty Cat” from pre-solo Bill Fox outfit The Mice.
The band’s in full swagger; it’s unsurprising that many persist in claiming Superchunk’s strong-suit is the live stage. Each of the four times I’ve witnessed them delivered a knockout, so I don’t disagree with that assessment, but must add that the records also provide a sweet punch. And Indoor Living’s best shot is served up last.
“Martinis on the Roof” fully encompasses Superchunk’s transitional motion, fully stretching out in both length (at two ticks shy of six minutes, it’s the disc’s longest number) and instrumentally (the xylophone and the “do-do” harmonies, the guitar soloing, the always on-the-money rhythm section of Ballance and Wurster) on a great piece of writing, both melodically and lyrically. In particular, I always get snagged by McCaughan rhyming the lines “watching basketball on the couch” with “trying to work it out.”
Knowing that Mac is an avid sports fan obviously helps, but even without that information there’s an underlying hook of sincerity to those words. It’s a piece of something real, simple but specific and lacking in triteness but conveyed with restraint that smartly avoids over-sharing (notably, they’ve never printed their lyrics.)
It’s a small element in the equation of a terrific song, but Superchunk has always specialized in modestly-scaled if often explosive pleasures. Part of Indoor Living’s lasting appeal is how it documents the band straining against that comfort zone. It may not have bowled me over initially, but across the span of years the LP has steadily increased in my esteem. In 2014, it sounds better than ever.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
