Music

SXSW: Superchunk at the Merge Showcase

by Michael Joffe

The first rule of SxSW is that no matter how great the show you’re at is, there’s something better going on somewhere else. You could be seeing Abba reunite at Emo’s when you’ll get a text message from a friend saying that Jimi Hendrix has risen from the dead and is throwing down with Run DMC in a parking garage on south Congress. There’s really no sense in worrying that you’re missing seeing Wayne Coyne roll down 6th St in his giant plastic ball – just enjoy what you’re at because someone, somewhere, wishes that they were in your place rather than where they are.

Part of what makes SxSW so simultaneously interesting and frustrating is the potential for secret shows, surprise appearances and impossible possibilities. Just two days into the festival and there’ve already been special guests like Nas and Damian Marley jamming together at the Fader Fort, Shins/Danger Mouse collaboration Broken Bells doing a pop-up show in a parking garage, Thee Oh Sees continued a time-honored tradition of playing an after-hours shows on the pedestrian bridge crossing by South Lamar and Bill Murray showed up at both GZA’s headlining performance at the Eastbound & Found party and his official set at the Mohawk.

While most of these are unofficial happenings, the official schedule always has a few “special guest” listings that get people talking and wondering. It used to be that SxSW had an official policy of one showcase per artist, so if someone had special dispensation to do more, it couldn’t be listed as such. In recent years they’ve relaxed this policy so seeing multiple showcases for in-demand acts is commonplace, but there’s still always a handful of teases on the itinerary. Perhaps one of the worst-kept secrets of this year’s festival was the “special guest” scheduled to open up the Merge Records showcase at the Cedar Street Courtyard at 7:30PM – label founders and indie rock legends Superchunk had already been announced as playing the Village Voice-sponsored day show on the Friday, and yet were nowhere to be found on the main grid. You didn’t need to think too hard to put two and two together.

Not that the Merge showcase needed the extra star power to draw people to it. It was already sure to be the hot ticket of the night thanks to featuring a set from She & Him, the project featuring M Ward and Zooey Deschanel, but when confirmation got out that Superchunk would indeed be kicking things off, the lineups wrapped around the block and those who got in early enough were rewarded with a searing set from the Chapel Hill quartet, out of action for the better part of the decade but slowly moving back to active duty. It was recently confirmed they were recording their first new record since 2001’s “Here’s To Shutting Up” and a couple of new songs were included in the eight-song set, in between stone-cold classics like “Hello Hawk” and “Hyper Enough”. Superchunk have been gone a while but they still rock in a major way – no surprise there.

Photo and words by: Frank Yang