Certain Songs #2570: Superchunk – “Everything At Once”

Album: Majesty Shredding
Year: 2010

. . .

In retrospect, the thing about Majesty Shredding was that it was full of — how you say? — bangers. From start to finish, as a matter of fact. Which, given that they’d been around for 20 years and were all well into their forties, wasn’t necessarily a given. We’ve already talked about “Digging For Something,” and “Crossed Wires,” but there was also “Slow Drip,” “Learned to Surf” and “Winter Games.”

It felt like a plethora of riches, and here’s what I wrote about it when I did my Top 30 Albums of 2010 list.

Comeback of the year, natch, but beyond a simple “we’re back, didja miss us?” Majesty Shredding didn’t purport to make any grand statements about the world, or even Superchunk themselves. Majesty Shredding became my favorite record of 2010 by reminding me how much I love raggedy, squealing songs that resolve themselves with singalong choruses. And that subsequently reminded me just how much I had taken Superchunk for granted during the 90s, when they were churning out record after record, none of which seemed as strong as this one, but all of which sound better in retrospect. So it turns out that, yeah, I did miss them, more than I had realized. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty grand statement after all.

And at the very end of the record, there was “Everything At Once,” still kicking out the jams, while opening with an electric guitar and Mac’s cooing of “oooh-oooh-hoo-oooh,” which hooked the song even before he started singing.

When something has you pinned
And the contraption that you’re in
Won’t let your day begin

And every rustling of leaves
Is the thieving of your thieves
And sleep is obsolete like bathtub gin

You can hear the big black clock
An no, it doesn’t slow or stop
It just ticks as you tick off what might have been

There isn’t a lot of tricksiness to “Everything At Once:” no breakdowns or big riffs, just a straightforward roar from start to finish, but with a chorus that totally sticks.

So here’s a song about nothing and everything at once
Oh the minutes and the months
The feedback and the drums
Oh the feeling noise becomes
Everything at once

Oh, and a couple of long guitar solos. One after the first chorus, and another after the final chorus, after Mac repeats “nothing and everything at once,” a few times, which is how I’m always going feel about anthemic noisy indie rock like this. On one level, it’s never going to change anything about how shitty the world is — which will be addressed more with tomorrow’s post — but on the other level, singing along with the “oooh-oooh-hoo-ooohs” over those glorious noisy guitars is sometime all I need.

And had Majesty Shredding been a one-off comeback — like the Jason & The Scorchers album from that year that I also loved — it would have been fine. More than I could have ever expected or hoped. But instead, it kicked off the second phase of their career, the first of four — so far — excellent albums that take us right through last year.

“Everything at Once”

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