After having a nice birthday dinner with the family, I enjoyed a rock dessert. I headed down to the Royale (formerly known as the Roxy) in Boston to see the mighty Superchunk, on their first tour in many moons. I've enjoyed the band since 1994's Foolish album, but I'd never seen them live. Opening the show was Versus, a band I'm less familiar with but still well aware of their legendary indie rock status.
I met up with Senor Breitling and ran into some other Boston rock blog notables: Michael Piantigini, who's the new managing editor of Clicky Clicky; Brad Searles, the proprietor of the great Bradley's Almanac; and Bryan Hamill, who writes the Ash Gray Proclamation. Versus played an excellent set of newer stuff and old classics, with Richard Baluyut wringing some awesomeness out of his SG and singing some nice harmonies with bassist Fontaine Toups. The band recently released its first album in a decade on Merge Records, which is the label run by Superchunk's Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance.
The Chunk played a rousing 90-minute set peppered with songs from their fine new album Majesty Shredding ("Digging for Something" and "My Gap Feels Weird" were highlights) and with older nuggets from the '90s including "Slack Motherfucker," "Hyper Enough," "Like a Fool," "Driveway to Driveway," "Detroit Has a Skyline" and "Precision Auto." McCaughan bounced around the stage like the Energizer bunny while lead guitarist Jim Wilbur laid down some serious solos right in front of me. Wilbur had fun giving and taking shit from some old buddies of his in the crowd and the band gave props to the city by covering songs by Sebadoh and local hardcore heroes SS Decontrol. Ballance still looked very much the indie rock bass babe and drummer Jon Wurster, resplendent in a purple shirt, pounded away like a madman. The last half hour of the show was pretty just pile-driving punk, leading to the formation of another '90s relic, an actual mosh pit.
Not a bad way to spend a birthday, not bad at all.
Hyper Enough:
Precision Auto (live on Jimmy Fallon):
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