Tuesday night was not a good night to drive eastbound in LA, there was a traffic jam on Sunset boulevard, and it took me way too much time to go to Origami Vinyl! It is on the Dodger Stadium route and there probably was some baseball event, but this did not prevent the store to fill up for Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan’s set.
Up in the loft, sitting on a high stool, McCaughan played an acoustic set of songs of Superchunk and Portastatic, his own side project described as having a quieter pop sound than his other rather energetic alt-rock outfit. Since he performed all the songs on acoustic guitar, I honestly could not tell the difference between the two breeds, as all the songs were delivered with the same energy and McCaughan’s slightly nasal young voice.
He was there for the release of a limited edition 7” single featuring a new song ‘This Summer’, which he performed, and a cover on the B side, Bananarama’s ‘Cruel Summer’, which he didn’t performed unfortunately!
Superchunk’s poppy-punky songs have plenty of energy and dynamism, so it was a sort of challenge to perform these little bullet-songs alone with the only help of an acoustic guitar, but McCaughan had no fear. First he was sitting on a high stool on the edge of the loft – I would have such vertigo – then he was announcing he would play a song (I think it was ‘Song for A Clock’) that he hadn’t practiced or another new one (Trees of Barcelona) that he ‘might not know’… needless to say he didn’t appear to have any problem with any of them
After a few songs, he asked for a few requests, which led him to play ‘Throwing things’, and, as someone had requested ‘Every single instinct’ he replied that the song had never been played live ever, and ‘Today will not be the first time’… what’s the deal with this song exactly? After a vigorous rendition of Superchunk’s ‘Digging for something ("I don't know if I can danxe this close, but I can try), he chose to play Portastatic’s ‘Noisy Night’ with the same powerful young voice, declaring he was considering this song being from the ‘same family’ than ‘Digging’… actually I thought I was seeing a theme, the summer theme, with the lyrics in the song (from Portastatic’s ‘Summer of The Shark’ album) talking about ‘summer currents’, ‘yellow bug lights’ and ‘the dog days when the attic gets warm’,…It is officially summer with all this summer songs, the happiest and most carefree time of the year. Still, someone should have asked him to play this Bananarama song.
Setlist:
Rope Light
Cool
This Summer
Home At Dawn
Song for a Clock
Spying on the Spys
Trees of Barcelona
Throwing Things
Digging for Something
Noisy Night
Detroit has a Skyline
San Andreas
