Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 04/27/1994
Forged at a difficult time in the band's history, this album is a dark masterpiece that contrasts the band's signature high-energy power punk attack of
On the Mouth with a far more somber, orchestrated approach, while still retaining the band's melancholy melodic majesty. From the opening track,
"Like a Fool," with it's droning guitar and languid pace,
Superchunk serves notice of their desire to move in new directions. The band itself was in flux, deciding to release
Foolish on its own label,
Merge, abandoning
Matador, who'd help shepherd the successful
On the Mouth album. There were also band tensions arising from the breakup of
Mac and bassist
Laura Ballance, hinted at in
Ballance's morbid album art of a disgruntled woman with a butchered rabbit hanging behind her. There's also
Mac's bitter words. He goes lyrically from the Icarus-fantasy
"Water Wings," where a female "pointed to the black cloud in the sky/and said that's what happened when you try to fly," to
"Without Blinking," where he laments, "when you said you're sorry, you did it without blinking/and you can not know how much that hurts." But great works are often forged out of misfortune. Wedding their melodic impulses with a more sedate approach that utilizes increasingly complexity,
Superchunk create a emotionally taut album that maps the changing direction of the band as it moves away from its crunchy, arena-pop roots.
~Chris Parker, All Music Guide
;)
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