1 LP

Like every record Superchunk has made over the last thirty-some years, “Wild Loneliness” is unskippably excellent and infectious. It’s a blend of stripped-down and lush, electric and acoustic, and highs and lows.

This new record is less about what we’ve lost in these harrowing times and more about what we have to be thankful for. On “Wild Loneliness”, it feels like the band is refocusing on possibility, and possibility is built into the songs themselves, in the sweet surprises tucked inside them. Like when the sax comes in on the title track, played by Wye Oak’s Andy Stack, adding a completely new texture to the song.

Or when Owen Pallett’s strings come in on “This Night”. But your favourite surprise on “Wild Loneliness” might be when the harmonies of Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley of Teenage Fanclub kick in on “Endless Summer” – as perfect a pop song as you’ll ever hear – sweet, bright, flat-out gorgeous – and yet it grapples with the depressing reality of climate change.