Superchunk – What a Time to Be Alive

Punk died at precisely the moment it was injected with leftism.

At first the music attracted antisocial psychopaths with a penchant for pain and a fascistic fashion fetish. That genre – and the indie/alt-rock it spawned – jettisoned any trace of urgency or vitality once its sense of pitch-black humor was gone and the scolding about Sandinistas and handwringing over “White Noise Supremacists” began.

Fresh off the heels of releasing a charity single for the litigious Hate Scam artists at Southern Poverty Law Center, Superchunk serve up a vanilla, by-the-numbers punk/pop sonic temper tantrum aimed squarely at the current administration and its enablers. While the title track is impulsive and hooky, the song comes off more flaccid than furious.

The failure of “old men” to die off soon enough to suit these indie-craft, sweater-clad parents (“I Got Cut”) has them all itchy, discombobulated and incontinent. “Cloud of Hate” features singer Mac McCaughan hoping “you [White House Cabinet, Republican Congressmen] die scared.” And just in case the current Oval Office occupant does not properly alarm the listener, the specter of “Reagan Youth” is raised, so you know how truly scary the current political climate has become. Gee whiz! Sounds like sourpusses suffering through a punker midlife crisis. But I sure as hell don’t miss the 1980s listening to these losers lamenting over the next seven years.

A popular meme making the rounds a year ago was “Donald Trump is going to make punk rock great again!” Well, the election of Trump (aka World’s Greatest Comedian Ever) has made politics a thousand times more inspiring and electrifying than any punk rock produced this century.

Superchunk
What a Time to Be Alive
[Merge]