Wild Loneliness

Description

Like all Superchunk albums for the past 30 years, Wild Loneliness has a contagious energy. It’s a mix of acoustic and electric. One can hear echoes of Come Pick Me Up, Here's to Shutting Up and Majesty Shredding. After the (more than justified) anger of What a Time to Be Alive, this new album is less about what we've lost in these difficult times and more about what we can be grateful for. Wild Loneliness holds a few surprises like the appearance of Andy Stack's saxophone from Wye Oak on the title track, Owen Pallett's strings on "This Night," and the harmonies of Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley from Teenage Fanclub on "Endless Summer." The latter is a perfect pop song, rarely heard—sweet, bright, absolutely beautiful—and yet it grapples with the depressing reality of climate change. Due to COVID, Mac, Laura, Jim, and Jon each recorded separately, but this also allowed them to bring in other guests remotely: Mike Mills (R.E.M.), Sharon Van Etten, Franklin Bruno, and Tracyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura, among others. Some of the album's songs were written before the pandemic hit, but others, like "Wild Loneliness," were written during lockdown and speak of isolation. Music is a memory machine that crystallizes memories, a sonic Proustian madeleine that takes us back to earlier times. Surely in 10, 20, or 50 years, Wild Loneliness will plunge us back into the same delight as today, but there's no need to wait to be amazed.