Mac McCaughan is like your one uncle who can always be counted on for a crisp twenty on your birthday. He always shows up where he’s supposed to, and he’s the only person at the Thanksgiving table that you don’t want to occasionally choke with a turkey leg or drown in the green bean casserole.
Bright Ideas is album number six for Portastatic, or Not-Superchunk as they’re sometimes called. It’s unfair (though impossibly tempting) to compare every Portastatic album to McCaughan’s work in Superchunk, so I’ll just throw out a quick, general comparison of the two bands to get it out of the way and appease that screaming monkey on our backs. The one that is demanding that the proclamation be made that Portastatic is a reigned-in Superchunk. You can hear the similarities—the slightly desperate voice, the musical shifts into melodic sidebars—but Portastatic doesn’t do driving and reckless, and Superchunk did. So now that that’s been said and the needle is in our arm and we’re all becalmed, I’d like to say that Bright Ideas is a great album. On the title song and “Truckstop Cassettes” McCaughan channels an Elliott Smith vibe and attaches the longing in his voice to slow, melancholy rhythms. “Through With People” and “White Wave” are the classic combination of pop/punk-rock and intricate lyrics—lyrics that manage to squeeze in words like “innocuous” without seeming forced—that have earned McCaughan a devoted following and constantly brought in new fans. This is maybe the best thing about Portastatic, and McCaughan’s work in general. Even when he’s serving up something new he doesn’t break away into something wildly different (remember when Everlast put out a country/pop album?). Portastatic continues to produce the type of music that its creator and fans both enjoy. With the exception of the goofy “Little Fern” and the previously mentioned maudlin tunes, the songs all crunch along on strong guitar and unique verse-to-chorus transitions that continue to defy the standard pop song formula. “The Soft Rewind,” “Registered Ghost,” and “Center of the World” are faster, heavier songs that carry the listener nicely into the violin laden “Full of Stars” which brings the album to its gentle close.
The album is a little light at only ten tracks, but that just means you’ll be able to listen to the whole thing on your walk to work. |