Superchunk's debut seven-inch was the first thing I heard when I moved to Chapel Hill. The record didn't look much like a record. The cover was handmade . . . kind of shoddy, actually . . . I figured it must be some Chapel Hill thing. We had local bands in Florida, but none of them had records and all of them all sucked. Enjoying local music was an idea as foreign to me as liking rap or country.
Superchunk didn't blow me away then, but there was something about them I liked. For a band making noise entirely new to me, they struck a strangely familiar chord . . . it was innocent and artless and hopelessly contagious.
So here come Portastatic, Mac's sideproject of old, gushing like that first slab of vinyl. These 14 songs are no more likely to soak in after one listen than those on the Chunk single, but for different reasons. Now the sound is not so much unfamiliar as it is deceptively unwound . . . not immediately catchy . . . but subtly inviting . . . It all reminds me of what I liked about Superchunk in the first place, how Mac's unmannered pitch fought its way through the guitar mess and everything came out playful and rocking and smart. His inner child is even more pronounced in these stripped-down tunes named things like "Beer and Chocolate Bars" (which, by the way, features the extremely lovely voice of the Bats' Kaye Woodward) and "Weird Time." . . . a significantly different experience from seeing the live band with Jennifer Walker (Erectus Monotone), John Wurster (Superchunk) and Ash Bowie (Polvo) . . . which isn't too surprising considering other than Jennifer playing bass on one song, Mac plays everything here . . . Look for it to brighten your V-Day. (Carrie McLaren)