Merge Records
2005
Bright Ideas
About This Album
Portastatic's Bright Ideas might just be their best record yet. Seeing as how the track record of Mac McCaughan's group is scattered with nothing but low-key gem after gem, that is high praise. It is the first full album he has released since his main band, Superchunk, went into the clichéd realm of indefinite hiatus, and while only Mac knows if any of these songs could have ended up as Superchunk songs, if they had the record they appeared on would have been hailed as a triumphant return to form. (Not that they really ever slumped anywhere except in the eyes of the indie press.) Those are really side issues though because all that really matters here is how wonderful Bright Ideas is. Broken into equal parts introspective and beautiful ballads and jumping rockers, the record is at once lively as heck and full of poetic insight. It feels like the product of a teenage heart and an adult (with kids) mind. As usual the music (as played by a core group of fellow Superchunker Jim Wilbur on bass and Matthew McCaughan on drums) is tighter than Tim Duncan on the free throw line during the NBA finals. McCaughan's vocals are pushed to the point of breaking, though he is able to apply the brakes now and then, and his lyrics are intimate, always interesting, and often hilarious.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

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