Mac McCaughan seems to have reached that magical point in his career where a guy can just say the hell with it–his main bands, Superchunk and Portastatic, have pretty much topped out in popularity, and it sounds like he’s decided to quit knocking his head on that ceiling and do whatever he feels like. For Portastatic’s new album, Bright Ideas (Merge), he apparently felt like making rock music so incandescent that it’d all but obliterate my memories of the band’s previous records. Bright Ideas backs away from the meandering, delicate feel of Portastatic’s earlier stuff, opting instead for the visceral intensity of long-ago Superchunk, but at the same time it’s McCaughan’s most grown-up album yet. Made entirely in a proper studio, without the home recordings that supplement the other Portastatic discs, it sounds bright and sparkly–the occasional string part adds a classy shine to the familiar Marshall-stack power punch of McCaughan’s guitar, and even the quiet tunes are big and open instead of bedroomy. These days McCaughan’s lyrics are touched with adult cynicism as well as the hope and wonder of new fatherhood, but he’s still hyper enough, if you’ll pardon the phrase, to keep any of the darkness from feeling too heavy. McCaughan’s been so consistent and prolific that I always expect good things from him, but it’s truly amazing that after almost 20 years he can still make a record this vital.
