Be Still Please
Merge, 2006
rating: 4.5/5
reviewer: baron

Portastatic is a strange sort of beast as far as bands go: it's sometimes upbeat and power-poppy, other times slow and melancholic. I suppose that's how it goes for side projects — chances for artists to exercise their musical whims in a different, open outlet. But Portastatic isn't even your typical side project; sure, it used to be, back in the days when Superchunk was alive and kicking alongside Pavement and a whole host of other mid-'90s indie-rock sacred cows. Nowadays, Superchunk is a non-entity, and frontman Mac McCaughan is a little busier running Merge Records than he is with, you know, making music. Strange indeed.

None of which, of course, explains why Be Still Please sounds so much different from any other Portastatic record. Last year's Bright Ideas was fast and upbeat with smart lyrics and sharp hooks, exactly the sort of record one would expect from a former college-rock king. The Who Loves the Sun OST, meanwhile, was, well, not exactly fast and upbeat. And former Portastatic albums from the '90s, on the other hand, were downright mopey, an outlet from Superchunk's less mopey aesthetic. So, as far as output goes, Portastatic's hard to pin down.

Be Still Please is a little easier to pin down; it takes the upbeat sensibility of Bright Ideas and adds in some of the downtrodden details and browbeaten subject material of their older work, making something more compelling than Portastatic's ever been. Lead track "Sour Shores" is the perfect example; balancing sad, sweeping violin, minor-chorded acoustic guitar, and barely noticeable percussion against the soaring vocals and incredible catchiness of the choruses, the song strikes an incredible unity of penetrating angst and expectant optimism.

While none of the other tracks on Be Still Please manages to execute this sort of blend quite as well, they're all still very strong. From Bright Ideas-esque rockers like "I'm In Love (With Arthur Dove)" – and what McCaughan has to do with some turn-of-the-century abstract artist is beyond me (yeah, that's right, I actually Wikipedia'd "Arthur Dove") – to the slow but hopeful "Getting Saved," with its occasional electric guitar and piano bangings, the album runs a wide range of emotions and sentiments. There's nothing quite as driving as last year's "Little Fern" or "The Soft Rewind," and there's nothing quite as depressing as old standards like the unhappy "Naked Pilsners," or as odd as "Before You Sailed Around the World." Instead, we get a mix of these styles that sounds surprisingly unique – oddly familiar but strikingly different.

The album cover is interesting: a gray seascape with black scrawled cursive lettering and McCaughan in a suit riding the waves on a purple inner tube. The possibilities for metaphor are endless: making the best of a dark situation? Some sort of bizarre mid-life crisis? Whimsical happiness and gloom, all in one? Maybe it doesn't relate to the music at all. But maybe it does - maybe McCaughan wants a visual representation of the triumph of hope over the opposition of depression, a sense that permeates the album. Maybe that's why he sings, "Well, all my songs used to end the same way:/ 'Everything's gonna be okay'/ You fuckers make that impossible to say" amid one of the very catchiest tunes he's ever written. And maybe that's why Be Still Please turned out so damn good.

1. Sour Shores
2. Black Buttons
3. I'm In Love (With Arthur Dove)
4. Sweetness And Light
5. Getting Saved
6. You Blanks
7. Like A Pearl
8. Cheers And Applause
9. Song For A Clock

Who Loves the Sun
Merge, 2006
rating: 3/5
reviewer: chadwicked

This not being his first time delving into the construction of a soundtrack, Mac McCaughan has assembled a small orchestra to stay true to both the film score style and his college rock roots. Some tunes stick like Portastatic standards (is there really such a thing? — this refers to the indie rock side of Portastatic, not the tropicalia or whatever else), while others are heavily orchestrated in a way we've come to expect from film music. Who Loves the Sun is a venture without vocals, comprised of 22 short pieces. The order of the songs seems rough without the visual transitions of the movie. Each song is its own image apart from the whole. As a result, the mood from track-to-track varies drastically. The pieces do work, though. Tracks like "Lively Chase" and "Snake Music" stand side-by-side in sequence, running the gamut from playful whimsy to sorrowful dirge. If anything, Mac McCaughan proves you don't have to be Gershwin or Elton John to make evocative and beautiful music for a film. McCaughan also proves, again, the flexibility of Portastatic as a side project.

1. Will's Return
2. The Sunset Rock
3. Maggie at the Dock
4. Fighting Music
5. Seems Like a Long Time Ago
6. The Search for Daniel
7. Nice One
8. Lively Chase
9. Snake Music
10. Nice Strums
11. Do You Want to Know?
12. Maggie and Mary
13. Stretch Waltz
14. Tremolo Chase
15. A Big Pastoral
16. Just Like a Real Book
17. Is That Mars?
18. Will's Return Complete
19. Fishing Music
20. Once Nice Piano
21. Last Kiss Music
22. Older Summers

Bright Ideas
Merge, 2005
rating: 3/5
reviewer: tamec


As everyone knows, Portastatic is the don't-call-it-a-side-project side project of Superchunk frontman and Merge records honcho Mac McCaughan, who on Bright Ideas performs alongside his brother Matt on drums and Jim Wilbur on bass. Portastatic ostensibly exists separately from Superchunk so that McCaughan can make use of the extra latitude afforded by a band that needn't cater to the same expectations as his main project. Nonetheless, Bright Ideas sounds pretty much like, well, a Superchunk record. There are the loud guitars ("White Wave," "Through with People") along with the more whimsical numbers ("Bright Ideas") that mark post-Here's Where the Strings Come In Superchunk albums. "White Wave," in particular, sounds a lot like any number of cuts from the band's Tossing Seeds singles collection.

Make no mistake, though -- this is some inoffensive indie pop. Superchunk haven't really had much vitriol for about a decade, and McCaughan's subject matter on Bright Ideas doesn't signal any change at all. I'm not all that happy about the chorus of the title track featuring "Sometimes you wanna put the past in the past/ but every generation gets bit in the ass," but hey, aren't hokey lyrics part and parcel of this sort of thing? "I Wanna Know Girls" could be a second single on Fountains of Wayne's mall-rock opus Welcome Interstate Managers, and "The Soft Rewind" sounds like Arlo, but at least it's not boring. Overall, Portastatic is exactly as advertised: catchy, sometimes dumb, occasionally rockin', but always at least competent pop.

1.Bright Ideas
2. Through with People
3. White Wave
4. I Wanna Know Girls
5. Little Fern
6. Truckstop Cassettes
7. The Soft Rewind
8. Registered Ghost
9. Center of the World
10. Full of Stars