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Single LP on black vinyl in single jacket with eurosleeve. Includes coupon for full download.

Like every record Superchunk has made over the last thirty-some years, Wild Loneliness is�unskippably excellent and infectious. It�s a blend of stripped-down and lush, electric and�acoustic, highs and lows, and I love it all. On Wild Loneliness I hear echoes of Come Pick Me�Up, Here�s to Shutting Up, and Majesty Shredding. After the (ahem, completely justifiable) anger�of What a Time to Be Alive, this new record is less about what we�ve lost in these harrowing�times and more about what we have to be thankful for. (I know something about gratitude.�I�ve been a huge Superchunk fan since the 1990s, around the same time I first found my�way to poetry, so the fact that I�m writing these words feels like a minor miracle.)

On Wild Loneliness, it feels like the band is refocusing on possibility, and possibility is built�into the songs themselves, in the sweet surprises tucked inside them. I say all the time�that what makes a good poem�the �secret ingredient��is surprise. Perhaps the same is�true of songs. Like when the sax comes in on the title track, played by Wye Oak�s Andy�Stack, adding a completely new texture to the song. Or when Owen Pallett�s strings come�in on �This Night.� But my favorite surprise on Wild Loneliness is when the harmonies of�Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley of Teenage Fanclub kick in on �Endless Summer.��It�s as perfect a pop song as you�ll ever hear�sweet, bright, flat-out gorgeous�and yet it�grapples with the depressing reality of climate change: �Is this the year the leaves don�t lose�their color / and hummingbirds, they don�t come back to hover / I don�t mean to be a giant�bummer but / I�m not ready / for an endless summer, no / I�m not ready for an endless�summer.� I love how the music acts as a kind of counterweight to the lyrics.

Because of COVID, Mac, Laura, Jim, and Jon each recorded separately, but a silver lining�is that this method made other long-distance contributions possible, from R.E.M.�s Mike�Mills, Sharon Van Etten, Franklin Bruno, and Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura,�among others. Some of the songs for the record were written before the pandemic hit, but�others, like �Wild Loneliness,� were written from and about isolation.

I�ve been thinking of songs as memory machines. Every time we play a record, we�remember when we heard it before, and where we were, and who we were. Music�crystallizes memories so well: listening to �Detroit Has a Skyline,� suddenly I�m shoutsinging�along with it at a show in Detroit twenty years ago; listening to �Overflows,� I�m�transported back to whisper-singing a slowed-down version of it to my young son, that year�it was his most-requested lullaby.

Wild Loneliness is becoming part of my life, part of my memories, too. And it will be part of�yours. I can picture people in 20, 50, or 100 years listening to this record and marveling at�what these artists created together�beauty, possibility, surprise�during this alarming (and�alarmingly isolated) time. But why wait? Let�s marvel now.

�Maggie Smith

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