MAC MCCAUGHAN RECKONS he’s keen. Super keen. As we speak it’s a couple of months until he tours Australia with Superchunk, the North Carolina purveyors (since 1989) of a kind of accelerated pop music that never forgot its noisy and local roots, and if he’s not exactly counting down the days, he’s definitely up for it. Packed-my-bags-already level keen Mr McCaughan?
“Yeah,” he laughs. “Got the duffel bag put to one side.”
After this long, you have to wonder if there is much romance in travelling. But then again, after running a band and a label for decades – 2024 is 30 years since Superchunk released their fourth, and career redefining, album, Foolish (now reissued and remastered), and 35 years since singer/guitarist McCaughan and bandmate/then partner/bassist, Laura Ballance formed the Merge label to release Superchunk records – you might think the same of his music and business career.
Yet neither seems in danger of losing appeal for McCaughan. And you gotta love that, especially if you venture out to see Superchunk in December: after all isn’t that the whole romantic beauty of being a fan? Or a musician? Or a music writer?
But here’s the rub, our tendency to romanticise sometimes skew a lot of things, like what we celebrate and remember. The romance of music and music fandom gets us into the songs and bands, gets others into careers and the music business, and many of us celebrate the wild and ultimately unsuccessful bands and the bankrupted or useless label because it was “done with heart”, because we are so caught up in the romance of it all.
But look at Merge which as well as giving us Superchunk brought Arcade Fire to international stardom, Spoon to fame and Magnetic Fields to something like mainstream success – none of which could have been predicted – and has released records from the likes of Redd Kross, The Mountain Goats, Hiss Golden Messenger, M.Ward, Ibibio Sound Machine, Lambchop, The New Pornographers, and, close to home for Australians, Quivers and Cable Ties. That’s some quality rollcall, and one sustained to boot.
Should we recognise that being smart and not just romantic, business-minded and not just song-centred, relationship-building and not just wilfully individualistic matters too?
“I don’t think that someone has to be a good businessperson to make good out but I do think that there is plenty of value, or there has been for us anyway, in being community-minded,”
McCaughan says. “We’ve always enjoyed being part of a larger scene, in terms of other bands we like playing with, that we like seeing, or just running into every few years, and I think that that, being part of a community, even if the communities spread out all over the country or all over the world, has been important to us.
“I think that a lot of what we do is influenced by the fact that we came out of a punk scene, a DIY scene, and I think that’s still how we think about it. If you going to make music in that way and have it be at least part of your job, you have to be creative and community-minded, because it would be hard to do that on your own.”
Respecting the different elements of what you do is important, not forgetting that – despite evidence to the contrary everywhere you look in rock’n’roll – being decent about how you do things and being sensible about how you do things, is a pretty good foundation so you can be romantic about what you do.
“There’s people who have made amazing albums that you probably would not want to hang out with,” chuckles McCaughan knowingly. “But I think for our part, the labels and the bands that were slightly older than us, that we would ask for advice, that we would open for, for the most part was super generous with their time and their wisdom. So that was our role models and we wanted to be like that.”
So that was the example in the guidance, but can he explain why Merge has lasted this long, discovered and amplified great bands, while retaining respect and relationships?
“Again, following the footsteps of Discord or Sub Pop or whoever, we are an artist-run label and we try to treat artists fairly and I think that that really goes a long way. Even artists that we no longer work with we have good relationships with most of them. In an indie world, you can’t afford to just pay someone the biggest advance; really what you have is your reputation. That’s been really important for us.”
It’s that reputation, not a promise to make someone the next Chappell Roan, that gets the signature on a Merge contract?
“Listen, if Chappell Roan wants to put out her next record on Merge, I’m all ears. Let’s not eliminate that possibility.”
Hopefully she is reading this. And maybe, if there is some scepticism, someone will point out to her one of those moments in time that probably still feels shocking though it’s true. In August 2010, two acts were at number 1 on the Billboard charts: Taylor Swift (on a major label) on the singles chart, Arcade Fire (on Merge) on the album chart.
The obvious point the accountants might note about that is Arcade Fire have not returned there – even after (or maybe because?) they moved to a major label – and neither has Merge, but Ms Swift since then outstripped everyone and gone back again and again. More interestingly though is the fact that labels like Creation in the UK, which housed Oasis when they became the biggest band in the UK, are examples of how for independent labels major success so often all but destroys them. But not Merge. How did Merge survive success?
“The English music business is so different from American at the indie level,” McCaughan says warily. “With the exception of Nirvana on Sub Pop, and they weren’t even on Sub Pop when they put out Nevermind, there’s not really an example of an Oasis on an indie label dominating the culture.”
Sure, and as he says, given things like the fact Taylor Swift is technically on an indie label these days – her own – labels tend to be more decorative than informative as a way of judging things, and in the end “it’s more about how you are doing things”. But back to the nub of that question: how does a small organisation cope with, and go on, after such massive, unpredictable and probably impossible to repeat, success?
“That’s a real thing,” McCaugahn concedes. “We did have to grow when we were putting out these records that were getting bigger and bigger and then when Arcade Fire are no longer on Merge, and Spoon are no longer on Merge, and we don’t have those giant records coming out every couple of years, what we did that was smart was even when we were putting out those big records we were not trying to grow unrealistically.
“The hard part now, for any label but including a label like Merge, is that those records or came out in an era when people were still buying downloads and CDs. When people are just streaming, even if we were putting those records out now, it would not be doing the same thing as a record back then. Unless, you are Chappell Roan.
There’s a footnote, literally, to that 2010 chart report where the editors refer to figures showing album unit sales were up slightly on the previous week but down almost a million – about 15 per cent – from a year before, a trend which would go on for the next 15 years.
A further footnote for us today is that in that same year Superchunk returned, after most of the previous decade off the road and out of the studio, with one of their greatest set of songs, Majesty Shredding. This from a group formed in 1989, which looked liked it had gone the way of all things by the early 2000s, only to return like nothing and everything had changed. That’s beyond romantic, that’s almost miraculous.
“Taking a hiatus like that was great for us. I made a few records in there with my solo project [Portastatic] and everyone was busy doing things but I think that break really allowed us to consider what do we enjoy about this, and what do other people enjoy about Superchunk,” says McCaughan. “If you make a record after eight years of not having made a record it kinda has to be, it should be, good because it would be embarrassing to make a terrible record. Or more embarrassing if it was just like, middling.”
Four albums since that return and Superchunk is not just a group of musicians who had to seriously think about what they do in the context of why would they keep doing it, but it’s pretty clear that lyrically at least, this is a group that has said the world isn’t getting away with any shit while they are about.
“I think that that’s true, and some of that just comes with age I think. Hopefully if you become more mature, in some ways at least, you are looking outwards a little bit more and less in your own head, thinking about yourself. Getting older, having kids does that, because you’re looking at the world is not just a place you have to navigate.
“It’s certainly more stressful than when you just blithely go in to life as a 25-year-old.”
Which, to bring us back to where we started, is the point where the romance and the reality squeeze into the same space. As a band, as an adult, as a label, romance isn’t abandoned – you can still believe in writing songs, in releasing records, in seeking to change – but it has that extra element of practicality and sense to keep existing in the world. Thinking as well as doing.
“We started the label and band as fans of other bands and when I think about those bands that inspired us, whether it was the Buzzcocks or Husker Du or Sonic Youth or Dinosaur Jr, or The Go-Betweens, these are people who are writing, first of all great songs, but writing about life, real life, says McCaughan. “The things about real-life that inspire you or attract you or make you mad might change as you get older but it’s still about what makes you want to make a song in the first place.
“We have tried to stay connected to that idea and writing things that are relatable but not pandering, I guess you would say.”
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Superchunk play:
Brightside, Brisbane, December 7
Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide, December 8
The Rosemount, Perth, December 10
Crowbar, Sydney, December 13
The Corner, Melbourne, December 14
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