great minds thinking alike.

wow wow wow wow, freaky. i was on the bus today, and i was thinking about how i wanted to reiterate my love for the last few couple, post-fatherhood, portastatic albums. most anyone who knows me and who at all likes the music i like knows that i have been long been down with the superchunk, and correspondingly, portastatic. but neither were bands i would say that i loved for their lyrics; although sometimes very clever and always very earnest, they also came off abstruse and random and either overthought or sort of tossed off. you know, indie rock. (partial exception to “foolish,” which will probably always be one of my top 10 albums of all time.) but something began to change with “the summer of the shark”, which communicated post-9/11 loss and confusion and emotional drift in the most honest way i’ve yet heard, sleater-kinney included. (this guy agrees, much more eloquently.)

and then with “bright ideas” (my number 1 with a bullet last year, i still listen to some portion of it every day), and now “be still please”, mac macaughan entered this completely new terrain. i know that “post-fatherhood” connotes fuzzy sweaters and boring-ass folk songs, but here, construed in its truest sense, it’s really apt. on these albums, open-hearted affection and wonder and humility (“song for a clock”, “i wanna know girls”) is irresolvably juxtaposed with wariness and anger (“bright ideas,” “you blanks”), which is how i’m sure i would feel if i were trying to raise a kidlet in america 2006. it’s kind of how i feel already. and the songs are as good or better than before, too. the new one is a little harder to get into than bright ideas, less immediate, more self-consciously “pretty” (specifically the one inexplicable clarinet (?) solo at the beginning of “you blanks,” otherwise one of my favorite songs on the album), but still solid and becoming more rewarding on each listen.

anyway, i was thinking about it, then i got home and discovered that none other than ms. JESSICA HOPPER beat me to it. le whoa.