Superchunk – No Pocky for Kitty
I’ve put off these daily record blogs for about a month and in that time, I realized that Autobiographical Order reached its 10th anniversary. I’ve been writing my silly record blog for 10 years. Just for fun, because I can. And it’s still kind of neat to take the journey through my record collection. Of course, these days, if I were doing something like this, it would probably be on a Substack and not a dot-wordpress blog, but also, who gives a shit. I have a much more sophisticated website that I run and this is just for fun, so why bother worrying about any of that stuff.
Another thing happened in that time, which is a huge bummer: legendary musician and engineer Steve Albini sadly passed away at the age of 61. Which kind of made this next entry a little difficult to get started. Albini, after all, produced Superchunk’s 1991 sophomore album No Pocky For Kitty, and in the same way you can hear his handiwork on the likes of PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me or Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, you can hear it here, particularly in the way the snare sounds like it would hurt like hell if it were to make contact with human skin.
I’m not going to make this a post about Albini, though I’ll say that the longer I thought about it, the more I realized he’s been a part of countless records that mean the world to me. (You can read about some of them here.) But this is certainly one of them, a fiery and fun punk record he recorded/engineered that’s kind of the obvious go-to for anyone looking to get into Superchunk. All the songs are revved up, overflowing with energy, loud and fun as hell. They occupy an interesting space in indie music, since they’ve evolved over time, but at first they were a little closer to bands like Jawbox and Jawbreaker (kind of a bridge between the two, now that I think about it) than, say, Pavement. Basically, they kicked ass. And still do; I saw them in, I wanna say, 2018? And they ripped. (I wanted to see them last year but tix were sold out. They live just down the road in North Carolina, so you know, could come back eventually I suppose?)
No Pocky for Kitty isn’t their best album, that to my ears is 1997’s Indoor Living (I know folks will disagree with me on that one). But it’s definitely the one that you can put on anytime and just enjoy the hell out of it. Songs like “Skip Steps 1 and 3” and “Punch Me Harder” are great mid-morning caffeine boosts, and I feel like I could lift a Buick when I’m listening to them loud. (I cannot lift a Buick.) I mean, any record that makes you feel like that is OK in my book. (Also, weird thing, Superchunk’s YouTube channel has a Korean title? Don’t ask me.)
RIP Steve Albini.
Rating: 9.4
Sound Quality: Great
Circuit des Yeux – -io
Wow, now this one’s an intense record. Circuit des Yeux had released a few records before signing with Matador, each of them somewhat dark and avant garde, akin to a more stripped down counterpart to later Scott Walker: grand, gothic, tense, dissonant and innovative. Certainly not for everyone, but like, definitely for me. I’m the kind of person who loves this stuff. Still, it seemed possibly inevitable that a big-deal indie like Matador would eventually release some of her music (though to be fair, she released music on Drag City and Thrill Jockey before, so it’s not like super DIY we’re talking).
Her Matador debut, -io, is stunning. It’s very much in the vein of her previous records but bigger and more elaborate, with lush orchestration and big arrangements. Take a song like “Vanishing,” which is built around a dark and breathtaking bed of strings and rises up into a masterful, climactic chorus. Then there are moments like “Dogma,” which is more of a hypnotic darkwave track, even kinda danceably so. A lot of this album is haunting, some of it terrifying, much of it beautiful. And in my estimation, underrated. I think in 2021 the post-lockdown hangover still kind of got in the way of a lot of music getting any kind of proper attention, but then again it’s not that better now, what with more publications shuttering, social media being pretty much useless and so on. But this is me saying this record is good and you should check it out.
Rating: 9.1
Sound Quality: Great
La Luz – s/t
The thing about having 1,600+ records is that eventually you find you reconsider whether you need any of them. I’m sure there are those out there who’d say I don’t need any of them, but let’s get real here. Obviously enjoyment of music isn’t dependent on format, though this is the one I gravitate toward. I’m sort of off on a tangent, though. I bring this up because my wife was looking at our collection and seeing how quickly space gets filled up and asked, “Do you think it’s time to maybe sell a few?” I protested at first but then realized I had some records that maybe were ready to be put on the marketplace. Which turned into several dozen. The more you think about it the more you find that maybe could put a little scratch back into your pocket. Or, more importantly, more records that you do need!
I didn’t necessarily think this would be one of them, but it struck me that until I had pulled this one off the shelf to write about it for this series, it had probably been at least two years since the last time I listened to it, and it’s not even that old! That’s not me saying this record is bad, by the way. In fact, it’s quite lovely. La Luz began as a kind of surf-rock band, and gradually evolved into a more lush and soulful desert psychedelia. It has some great songs and the production’s gorgeous, and really, there’s not much to not like here. I just… don’t listen to it that much? And while a record collection of over 1,000 means not listening to everything everyday, I know that I’m definitely gonna get back to Pet Sounds or Endtroducing… or XO. But this one, I actually envisioned the possibility that it just wouldn’t make it back into the shuffle, and so on Discogs it goes. I gave it a nice home for a while, now it’s someone else’s turn.
Rating: 8.8
Sound Quality: Great
1000 Times Jeff 
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