I Hate Music

It's only natural that this is less of the same, and that in "Void" and "Staying Home" early on he's as bummed as a good grunge visionary should be.

This album is undeniable proof that creating something with resounding beauty is the ultimate defiance of death.

This record is so good we don't need to focus on those details. With I Hate Music, Superchunk will once again land near the top of my year-end list.

Falling down, getting up, and persevering through music is something Superchunk have done time and time again. On I Hate Music, they’ve bested even themselves.

Superchunk have made a record that ties experience to the present, instinct to wisdom, youthful vigor to aged knowledge, everything in the world to a passion for music.

The album’s more reflective tone cuts deepest in “Low F” and “What Can We Do,” and they’re both among the most intensely personal songs in the band’s long, distinguished history.

Superchunk continues fishing for perfection--and, as always, the band brings the hooks.

They direct their efforts with a determined forward thrust that spills over the melodic parameters with a celebratory display of rock ‘n’ roll revelry.

I Hate Music is a fine addition to the canon, a little samey in places but it sweeps you along with its clattery blast and warm melodic hooks, [Sep 2013, p.93]

There’s no better way to describe the music than impeccably Superchunky.

[Superchunk] crafted an album of effervescent ebullience, fusing joy and sadness with a skill that built on their two decades of existence.

What amazes most, and there's much to marvel at here, is the childlike wonder and sprightly sense of play that still remains after all these years.

Rather than let heartbreak render the band static and immobile, Superchunk has thankfully turned to their faithful creative outlet of music once again, and the memories and spirit of their lost friends will resolutely live on in the stirring songs they have written to honour them.

I Hate Music isn’t a missive on being an aging rocker as much as it’s reflective of the wisdom and maturity garnered as a touring band in what is too often--and outright mistakenly*--only considered the realm of the young and starry-eyed. Only Superchunk does it with the same unstoppably jaunty bounce and screaming guitars that defined (No Pocky For Kitty) and redefined (Majesty Shredding) their still palpable sound and made them leaders in their genre

They’re love songs about persistence, and that’s embedded in the sound of the record; you don’t need a lyric sheet to hear it.

I Hate Music is just as fresh and powerful as Majesty Shredding, with the same hook-driven songs, fiery performances, and stunning vocals from Mac McCaughan.

Superchunk clearly trust their music to hold up under all the heaviness of life's big questions, and trust us to hold up, too.

Their latest full-length occasionally veers into darker territory than usual, but for the most part it sticks to what the band do best. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Ultimately, this album stands in euphoric, unrepentant denial of its own title. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Their jagged power pop has been refreshingly consistent, but never lax. And I Hate Music--the band’s second post-hiatus release since 2010’s Majesty Shredding--is no different.

Superchunk's 10th studio LP delivers a perfect strike at the heart of mature-stage alienation.

Thoughtful, quiet moments like that ["What Can We Do," "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo," and "Your Theme"] work but, this being Superchunk, the uptempo tracks still hit hardest.

I Hate Music weds the North Carolina indie legends' eternal penchant for grind-it-out power punk with the pensiveness and introspection that colored their late-'90s/early-aughts output. [No. 101, p.56]

Far from being self-proclaimed slack mothers their work ethic and life ethos is to be admired, if not from afar, but from the front row of a sweaty mosh pit as if your own existence depended on it.

Only the most jaded misanthrope could truly hate I Hate Music.

I Hate Music is no Majesty Shredding, but it’s no slacker either.

So goes the follow-up to the 'Chunk's 2010 comeback, Majesty Shredding: rock vets fighting demons with delicious noise and sugar-crusted hooks as darkness falls.

Save for a couple of filler tracks--especially the trashy, throwaway 'Staying Home'--I Hate Music is an earnestly constructed album of melodic alt-rock.

The album's arrangements are the least complex they've been since Superchunk's early days, making these 11 tracks less immediately sticky than previous efforts. A bit more teeth would have made this one for the ages.