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Superchunk has announced a new album. Their 13th record to date, Songs in the Key of Yikes, is out August 22nd via Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan’s label Merge Records. Today, they’ve shared lead single and album opener, “Is It Making You Feel Something.”

“It’s always been the case that everyone is going through something that you may not be aware of,” frontman Mac McCaughan said about the album in a press release. “This is currently more true than ever–but also the case that we are all going through some things together. In the face of that, what good is art and where is happiness found? (Spoiler alert: I don’t know.)”

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“[‘Is It Making You Feel Something’] is about not second-guessing yourself in the very second-guessable process of writing words and music,” McCaughan stated. “It’s about the legitimate question of ‘who needs this and what is it good for?...

By his own admission, Bob Mould is not a Zoom kind of guy, at least not in terms of the video aspect. During the early months of the Covid lockdown, he passed on doing any of those briefly in-vogue virtual concerts. “People were saying, ‘Oh, come on, you could do Zoom concerts,’” he says. “And I’m like, ‘No, you don’t understand. That’s not what performing music is. Performing music is when people get together in a room and create a community.’ The idea of doing Zoom from my work room was frightening.

The 15th album from Bob Mould opens with the 64-year-old indie-rock icon searching for serenity in a world on fire. Over slow, spaciously grinding guitar-pop, he finds himself alone on a mountain, surveying an expanse of natural beauty despoiled by strife and terror — warplanes in the sky, cities in collapse. But he’s above it all: “I’m so far away from here/Did you see me disappear,” he wonders as the song lifts off into a crescendo of beautiful chaos.

For longtime Mould-watchers the inward-odyssey he maps out...

Bob Mould returns in 2025 with a new album, Here We Go Crazy, the former Husker Du rocker’s first LP in five years.

Ahead of the album’s March 7 release date, Mould has shared the first single, the album’s opening song and title track, “Here We Go Crazy,” along with its Gus Black-directed visual.

“I’ve been spending time in the Southern California desert over the past few years, and the video was shot there,” Mould said in a statement. Chilly wilderness atop a mountain, expansive vistas below the hills,...

A new “musical concept” featuring actors Michael Shannon, David Krumholtz, and Kevin Corrigan staged their debut performance Thursday at a New York club.

The band — dubbed Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, and not the more apropos Character Actors — was rounded out by Jon Wurster, a veteran of bands like Superchunk, the Mountain Goats, and Bob Mould’s.

As Wurster promised in his Instagram post announcing the act — and as evidenced by social media video of the show — Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon brought “improvised #rocknrollweirdness” to New York’s tiny Berlin Under A for their first gig,...

News of Steve Albini’s unexpected passing on Wednesday, May 8th, has been met with an outpouring of tributes from fellow musicians, including those who had worked with him.

Cloud Nothings worked with Albini on their 2012 magnum opus, Attack on Memory. “steve touched countless lives and changed mine and many others for the better,” frontman Dylan Baldi wrote on Twitter. “a genuine, singular, principled person. spent the last 40 years helping people make art. there’s no reason for him to be gone and the world is less interesting without him. just a really sad day.”

Pj Harvey said working with Albini on 1992’s Dry “changed the course of my life. He taught me so much about music, and life. Steve was a great friend – wise, kind and generous. I am so grateful.”

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker collaborated with Albini on his 2009 solo album, Further Complications. “Working with Steve Albini was...

R.E.M. have been retired for more than a decade, but fans of the band will still have a chance to catch a live performance of their 1983 debut album Murmur in the near future. That’s because actor Michael Shannon and guitarist Jason Narducy have announced a seven-date US tour, during they’ll perform Mumur and other early R.E.M. songs.

With accompaniment from Jon Wurster (drums), Dag Juhlin (guitar), Nick Macri (bass), and Vijay Tellis-Nayak (piano), Shannon and Narducy will visit Minneapolis, Athens, D.C., Brooklyn, and more throughout February 2024. Tickets go on sale Friday, September 29th.

“I have been a fan of R.E.M. since my cousin played me the Document cassette out at my Aunt Norma’s trailer,” said Shannon in a statement. “I spent days and hours stumbling around my hometown of Lexington, Ky listening to Murmur on my Walkman, long before the notion of...

Yo La Tengo celebrated the fourth night of Hanukkah — and the midpoint of their annual Bowery Ballroom residency marking the Festival of Lights — with an encore entirely dedicated to the Ramones, featuring the punk legends’ longtime drummer Marky Ramone.

The indie rock trio hinted at what was to come Wednesday when they opened their Night Four gig with their instrumental rendition of “Blitzkrieg Bop.” For the encore, Yo La Tengo whipped out five Ramones classics — “Rockaway Beach,” “I Can’t Make It on Time,” “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Loudmouth” and “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,...

The afternoon sun streams through the windows of the Brooklyn art space ChaShaMa. Steve Keene, possibly the world’s most prolific painter, is hard at work, even though the gallery’s hosting a retrospective of his work. Right now, he’s adding a few blond streaks to Iggy Pop’s hair on the cover of the first Stooges album. Keene’s most famous for painting album covers on plywood panels, dozens per week, then selling them absurdly cheap. “It’s handmade,” he says with his easy grin. “That means somebody...

Mac McCaughan, frontman of indie rock stalwarts Superchunk, has released a new song, “Dawn Bends,” from his upcoming solo album, The Sound of Yourself, out September 24th via Merge.

“Dawn Bends” is, largely, an acoustic-led tune, until about halfway through, when an electric guitar appears out of nowhere, spinning knotty, distorted riffs to counterbalance the otherwise mellow song. “Feet in the air,” McCaughan sings, “Head stuck deep in the sand/How will you find your friends?/When dawn doesn’t break, it bends.”

In a statement, McCaughan described “Dawn Bends...

“I live in the darkness,” John Darnielle warns us on the Mountain Goats’ latest. That Darnielle needs to spell that out so clearly ought to be cause for alarm, since he hasn’t exactly been Mary Poppins up to this point. One of the most charming songs he ever wrote, 2005’s “Dance Music,” was an origin story of sorts about the power of his record player to drawn out the pain of his abusive childhood; “Against Pollution,” a lovely hinge point on the Goats’ excellent 2004 album We Shall All Be Healed,...

Bob Mould has announced his Distortion and Blue Hearts! Tour, kicking off September 16th at Paradise in Boston.

The tour will be broken into two halves. Mould will spend the first three weeks performing with Jason Narducy on bass and drummer Jon Wurster. Mould will perform Solo Distortion electric shows on his own, beginning October 15th in Bloomington, Illinois.

“It’s been a year and a half away from the stage,” Mould said in a statement. “I’ve missed the noise, the sweat, and seeing your smiling faces. I’m fully vaccinated,...

The burst of creativity from John Darnielle, the word-swilling frontman and piercing singer-songwriter behind the North Carolina-based Mountain Goats, has not receded one bit in recent years. Quite the opposite: After successive full band triumphs with the noir-roots of 2017’s Goths and the wizardly wistfulness of 2018’s In League With Dragons, Darnielle is now entering the fourth decade of his recording career with a pair of 2020 albums.

If this year’s earlier Songs For Pierre Chuvin harkened back to Darnielle’s early All Hail West Texas-era days as a solo boombox savant,...

Read: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time List

Voters were asked to submit ranked ballots listing their 50 favorite albums of all time. Votes were tabulated, with the highest-ranked album on each list receiving 300 points, the second highest 290 points, and so on down to 44 points for number 50. More than 3,000 albums received at least one vote.

Artists, Songwriters, and Producers 9th Wonder Johntá Austin A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie Mick Avory

The Kinks Glen Ballard Alice Bag Bas Jon Batiste Big Boi Beyoncé Branko Michael Brun Eric Burdon

The Animals John Cale

The...

Bob Mould has shared a new song, “Siberian Butterfly,” from his next album, Blue Hearts, out September 25th via Merge Records.

“Siberian Butterfly” is a blast of classic alt-rock, and, in a statement, Mould explained that the song began with him parsing the notion of “collectors” — “people with excessive means who gather the works of creative folk for their ego-driven portfolio” — before it transformed into something more personal.

“As I kept writing, the narrative shifted toward themes of change, growth and freedom,” he said. “These motifs are central to how we become our true selves.

When Covid-19 shut down the live music industry and screwed Pat Finnerty out of his job as a working musician, the 40-year-old Scranton, Pennsylvania, native started fucking around on Instagram live. For the first two months of quarantine, he challenged himself to see if he could learn every part to classic songs by Billy Joel, Huey Lewis, and Peter Gabriel — in under an hour — in his West Philadelphia bedroom studio, where he’s lived for the past decade.

For selections by Elo and Marvin Gaye, Finnerty summoned his group, the Full Band,...

Bob Mould’s raging new song “American Crisis” starts with a full-on scream.

The track will appear on his upcoming 14th solo LP, Blue Hearts, and it vibrates with urgency as he sings, “I never thought I’d see this bullshit again.” The lyrics compare the current political and social environments to the Eighties, alluding to the way AIDS claimed innumerable lives, and he caps it with a cutting chorus, “Welcome back to American crisis/No telling what the price is.” It’s an aggressive first taste of the album,...

Paul Rudd and Jason Segel — who portrayed perhaps cinema’s biggest Rush fans in I Love You, Man — both remembered drummer Neil Peart in loving statements to Rolling Stone. Peart, along with his Rush bandmates Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, appeared in the 2009 comedy, as well as a promotional short for the film.

“I’m so sad to hear about Neil Peart’s passing,” Segel tells Rolling Stone. “Drumming to ‘The Spirit of Radio’ was one of my happiest moments. Getting to know Neil even the tiniest bit, and gush...

Earlier this month, Bob Mould told me an anecdote about how people view his live shows. “Somebody once tweeted something like, ‘Oh, my God. I’m at a Bob Mould show, and it seems like it’s been an hour and a half of the same song. It’s incredible,'” he said. “At first, I sort of took offense to it, and then I realized, no, that’s actually like, ‘Oh, cool.'”

Few artists have upheld (or at least revisited) a musical point of view quite like Mould.

Bob Mould, who admits he’s “typically not the nostalgic type” in a statement, has booked two concerts that will mark 40 years since he launched his music career as a member of Hüsker Dü. The gigs will take place in St. Paul at the Palace on March 30th and the Turf Club on the 31st. The latter show has already sold out.

In a remembrance, Mould recalled how he started his “professional” music career on March 30th, 1979 playing with a band called Buddy and the Returnables that featured the three...

“I’ve always been a write-what-you-know kind of guy,” Bob Mould says on what he describes as a rainy San Francisco morning. “So this time, I was trying to consciously create a little bit of a different world to work in.”

He ended up changing his world in two ways. On one hand, he radically overhauled his life and relocated himself to Berlin for big parts of the past few years. He doesn’t speak German, but he’s immersed himself in the culture, going clubbing again and enjoying a change of pace.

On May 12, the Numero Group label released the massive The Best of the Best Show, a collection of Wfmu comedy Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster's prank calls. At 16 CDs and with more than 20 hours of material, one could probably add "All" to the collection's title and get away with it. Even at this size, the collection is something close to essential for fans of the duo's deadpan, often surreal comedy. "Darren and the Greasy Funk," which you can listen to below, is a prime example of what these guys do, and along with the track, we've got Scharpling and Wurster's own recollection of how the call came about. Enjoy!Tom Scharpling: Hi, Jon. The impetus for this call started with an Allen Toussaint show you went to in North Carolina, right? Jon Wurster: Yes. In August of 2007, I went to see New Orleans jazz legend Allen Toussaint...

Harold Ramis passed away today at the age of 69.

The veteran director and actor was known for films including Groundhog Day, Caddyshack, Analyze This and Analyze That, all four of which he wrote and directed, and notably for his role as Dr Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters.

Following the news, tributes have poured in from Ramis's friends and colleagues across Hollywood.

Deeply saddened to hear of the passing of my brilliant, gifted, funny friend, co-writer/performer and teacher Harold Ramis.

— Dan Aykroyd (@dan_aykroyd) February 24, 2014

Instead of Wednesday's comic, this is what will be put up. I'm sharing it now because reasons. Rip Harold Ramis :_( pic.twitter.com/bV8daK8PD2

— Ash Vickers (@Mega_Ashra) February 25, 2014

Sad to hear my friend Harold Ramis

passed away. A brilliant, funny, actor and

director. A wonderful husband and dad.

Big loss to us all. bc

— Billy Crystal (@BillyCrystal) February 24, 2014

Egon was my favourite Ghostbuster.

My alienation from current pop is almost complete; the only 2013 Top 40 material I enjoyed enough to play repeatedly was Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, from an album released in 2012. So I am officially a cranky old fart. But there are more and more of us, and maybe fellow COFs will find this list useful. By the way, crossing that border of alienation made me think more than ever that saying my lists are of the "best" albums is nearly absurd, hence the new headline.

1. Wire: Change Becomes Us (Pink Flag)

This is my favorite Wire of this century thanks to more emphasis on Colin Newman's brooding. When allied to their chugging motorik beats, it's irresistible to me. There are still some uptempo burners that recall their beginnings in punk, and some more whimsical though still musically solid songs, but it's Newman's dark musings that made me play this repeatedly.

2. Kitchens of...

It’s a bittersweet day in the world of radio (and streaming radio): Tonight at nine, listeners both in the Tristate broadcast area and streaming the world over will tune in to the final episode of Tom Scharpling’s "The Best Show on Wfmu." For thirteen years, Scharpling has hosted this freewheeling three-ring circus of a weekly show that melds music, sketch comedy, interviews, call-ins from loyal (and, in some cases, famous) fans, as well as those from his longtime writing partner Jon Wurster, who regularly phones in as a wide array of ridiculous characters. During the lead-up to his radio farewell, Vulture called Scharpling to share his memories and thoughts on six of the show’s most iconic moments.Let’s start with “ Rock, Rot, and Rule ,” a 1997 call in which Wurster played a music critic who’d written a book about how every musical act either “rocks,...

Rolling Stone released their list of the 50 funniest people alive, and Eric Clapton was number one. Just kidding, Louis C.K. topped their comprehensive list of people who, in their estimation, are making us laugh the hardest and most consistently.

See the slideshow below for the top 10 people (if you count the two-headed monster that is Matt Stone and Trey Parker) who Rolling Stone deems the funniest in 2013.

To the surprise of no one, Louis C.K. topped the list, citing his critically acclaimed show "Louie" and his revolutionary practices in selling albums and concert tickets. Oh, and the fact that pretty much nobody is as good at stand-up comedy as he is. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Amy Poehler also made the top ten.

As Splitsider points out, the list includes a few glaring omissions that even the most casual comedy fan may find eyebrow-raising, such as Conan O'Brien, Sarah Silverman,...

Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard (or, I'm sorry, "Benjamin Gibbard"… which does, I'll admit, look a lot nicer on an album sleeve) stopped by The Colbert Report last night to talk about his solo album Former Lives (my review) and none of his other interests or hobbies… or the Postal Service reunion that isn't going to happen so stop talking about it.

Though Gibbard sort of blew it during the interview (whoops), he brought a handful of "surprise" guests with him: Aimee Mann, Ted Leo, Superchunk's Jon Wurster and Jamie Edwards (on keyboards) all lent a helping hand on Ben/Aimee duet "Bigger Than Love." As an added web exclusive bonus (as debuted on Pets.com, naturally), Ben even returned to perform a solo rendition of hushed acoustic ballad "I'm Building A Fire." Check it all out below.

Interview

"Bigger Than Love"

"I'm Building A Fire"

What'd you...

Even after nine albums, Aimee Mann seems to always find a way to keep things fresh. She’s roared through concept albums, Christmas songs and soundtrack work; her last two albums “@#%&*! Smilers” and last week’s drop of “Charmer” have been decidedly pop-driven efforts, this new one with even more sonic layers and even a James Mercer duet. But that’s not the end of Mann’s penchant for collaboration on "Charmer. She had Laura Linney star in the music video for the title track. Jon Hamm, Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster and others showed up for the clip to “Labrador,” directed by Tom Scharpling...

MTV generation, here's your Tuesday afternoon distraction. Aimee Mann's newest music video, for her song "Labrador," is an exact remake of the video that made her famous, "Voices Carry" by her former band Til Tuesday. Also, Jon Hamm makes a cameo, taking some time off from his busy schedule of not wearing underpants.

Hamm plays a skeevy, fictional version of the video's director Tom Scharpling, who in real life is best known for hosting the cult favorite radio program and podcast "The Best Show on Wfmu." He's carved out another niche for himself as an indie music video director, but has recently threatened to stop (if you're a band with plenty of cash to throw around for a great video from Tom Scharpling, we hope you do so right now).

The video for "Labrador" also features Scharpling's comedy partner (and Superchunk drummer) Jon Wurster as Mann's jealous boyfriend. Keep...

First things first: Everyone go back and watch (or: watch for the first time, no judgment) "Voices Carry," the 1985 'Til Tuesday video starring one very young Aimee Mann. Once you've finished your homework, you are allowed to watch the video for "Labrador" (off Mann's most recent album, Charmer), which will suddenly look very familiar. As in, it is a shot-for-shot remake of the original "Voices Carry" video — except! Actual video director Tom Scharpling recruited Jon Hamm to play fake video director Tom Scharpling in a bit before the video, meaning we are all treated to a minute of Jon Hamm sporting a bad mustache and saying words like "collambrotive." Shouts also to Superchunk drummer (and Scharpling's comedy partner) Jon Wurster, who plays the music-video actor with cheesy gusto, and to Ted Leo for that wig. Watch closely; you'll see it. And here's the original, just in case:...

It might go without saying at this point that The A.V. Club is big on Bob Mould. We’ve had him in to do Undercover, talked to him several times, and featured him doing a version of “Hoover Dam” last year for the One Track Mind series. All the same, we’re gladly hosting this exclusive live video of Mould performing yet another version of “Hoover Dam” in preparation for the upcoming Sugar reissues. The clip was filmed in San Francisco during Noise Pop and features Mould’s current band, including Superchunk’s Jon Wurster and Verbow's Jason ...

Bob Mould has been busy reviving Sugar's classic 1992 debut Copper Blue on the road lately with a great band that includes drummer Jon Wurster of Superchunk and bassist Jason Narducy of Telekinesis, and it sounds like old Bob Mould has been rubbing off on new Bob Mould. His new album, Silver Age, is described as "punishingly loud melodically sparkling pop/rock" in the vein that Mould has owned for most of his life. The record comes out Sept. 4 on Merge. Check out a tracklist below. Star Machine Silver Age The Descent Briefest Moment Steam Of Hercules ...

Bob Mould, the former frontman for post-punk bands Hüsker Dü and Sugar, has signed to Merge Records, and is set to put out a new record this fall with current bandmates Jon Wurster and Jason Narducy, according to Pitchfork. Mould, who recently performed Sugar's 1993 debut album Copper Blue in its entirety at Noise Pop in February, spoke to Billboard last week about working with Wurster and Narducy, the legacy of Copper Blue, the recent star-studded tribute concert for him that brought together the likes of Dave Grohl and Ryan Adams, and how much he likes the new

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Always something of a free-wheeler, Bob Mould has finally decided to settle down (sort of): The Husker Du frontman, who's been cavorting about with a record deal lately, has inked a deal with Merge Records for a new album featuring Superchunk’s Jon Wurster and Telekinesis’ Jason Narducy. The album doesn’t have a release date yet, but should be out sometime this year. [via Prefix]...

The arrival of Superchunk’s fourth album, Foolish, in April 1994 accompanied significant changes for the North Carolina band that, nearly two decades later, have become indie-rock lore. First, Foolish was the band’s first full-length on Merge Records, the indie label run by guitarist-vocalist Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance. Now on its own away from Matador, which released its preceding albums, Superchunk had no label advance to fund the studio sessions. That made for a breakneck pace at Pachyderm Studios with producer Brian Paulson—17 songs in three days. As drummer Jon Wurster writes in the new reissue ...

“Scream when captured / Arch your back / Let this whole town hear your knuckles crack,” sings Mountain Goats’ frontman John Darnielle on “Damn These Vampires,” the opening track of All Eternals Deck. But the song—as well as the rest of the album—runs counter to such rawness. All Eternals Deck is one of the smoothest, most delicate iterations of Darnielle’s thorny storytelling to date, though the infamously word-wise, lo-fi pioneer hasn’t exactly buttoned down since signing to Merge Records last year. With Superchunk’s Jon Wurster still on drums and longtime bassist Peter Hughes cementing Darnielle’s tattered ...

The National We like this trend, even if we don’t understand it: bands are hiring unexpected directors to create film-quality music videos, starring great actors and comedians, for songs that have been out for ages. First we had Tom Scharpling’s zany take on the New Pornographers’ “Moves,” starring Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster and I Don’t Care About Your Band author Julie Klausner as harmonizin’ redheads Carl Newman and Neko Case. And now here come Kristen Schaal and Roger Sterling himself, John Slattery, playing political bedfellows in a new video for The National’s “Conversation 16.”...

Wfmu will be holding its annual pledge drive this month, including two crucial fundraising events hosted by The Best Show tonight (March 1) and next week (March 9) from 9 p.m. to midnight Et. The show which is hosted by Tom Scharpling (and frequently featuring Jon Wurster), will feature Ted Leo and A.C. Newman performances in hopes of raising some much needed funds for the freeform radio station....

Mates of State and Superchunk’s Jon Wurster jam with Newman on sophomore solo album

A.C. Newman is the primary songwriter for the New Pornographers, but he gets less attention than some of his bandmates. He isn’t countrified like Neko Case or ostentatiously theatrical like Dan Bejar (Destroyer). Instead, he deflects attention from his persona to his songwriting bona fides, availing himself of the layered production and inventive twists of ’60s/’70s stalwarts like Harry Nilsson. Newman’s second solo outing, Get Guilty, is a baroque-pop gem, on which he displays remarkable tonal control via crafty arrangement. Check out how the fanfare of “There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve” seamlessly tapers off into an acoustic jangle and syncopated maracas, shifting the mood of Newman’s unflashy but indelible vocal melody. Or “Thunderbolts,” where an eerie synth seems to pull backward against an inexorable tide of crunchy guitar. In...