July 9, 2010

Be Prepared: Superchunk | On The Mouth [Remastered Reissue] | 17 August

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Oh, On The Mouth, how we love you so, ever since we borrowed you from the cool quiet girl on the next cinder block-walled freshman hall over with the coal black-dyed hair and taped you, which girl we secretly credited for the huge gift of turning us on to Superchunk in the spring of 1993. Many, many years later we learned that all along it was our friend Ken's record, and so Ken deserves the credit of pointing us toward Superchunk, which in turn pointed us in the direction of myriad North Carolina bands as well known as Archers Of Loaf or as obscure as Finger. Because of their support slot on the final Replacements tour we were familiar with The Connells first, but their records sounded increasingly tame as we delved deeper and deeper into the heavier and weirder sounds emanating from the somewhat ominously monikered area known as The Triangle. We consider On The Mouth a perfect record; our only quibble is that the amazing, top-10-songs-of-all-time-list, would-be title track was left off the record and included only as a B-side to the "Mower" single.

Merge will reissue On The Mouth, Superchunk's third album, Aug. 17; the same day the venerable label also reissues a remastered version of its stunning, Albini-recorded sophomore set No Pocky For Kitty. That album's opening three cuts may be the best three opening cuts on any record ever. The two records will be available on vinyl with download coupon, on CD and digitally. Both records are already streaming in full for a limited time at the Merge store here and here respectively. If you don't yet own these records, well, we feel sorry for you. Really, we do. You can't live your life that way. Merge wants to help, and is offering a teaser MP3 of the lead track of No Pocky For Kitty, which we're linking to below. Superchunk issues its first new record in nine years, Majesty Shredding, Sept. 14.

Superchunk -- "Skip Steps 1 & 3" -- No Pocky For Kitty (Remastered Reissue)
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[pre-order No Pocky For Kitty here and On The Mouth here]

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