Mac McCaughan interview [pt2]

Here we go with part two of our exclusive interview with Mac of Superchunk fame. We’re massive fans of Superchunk and Merge records here at DbR . . . Part one can be seen here

Q5. When a band ‘reforms’ the cynics amongst us see the lucrative festival circuit winding out in front of them… (The optimist hopes the band felt they had unfinished business)… Tell us about Polvo’s ‘regroup’…

Polvo is a really interesting case because there was never any acrimonious meltdown or anything…all those guys seemed to just kind of move on; i read recently where Ash or Dave said they just kind of felt they’d done all they could do with the band. they lived in different places for a long time and Dave still lives in NYC with the other guys down here in NC. we asked them to play our 15-year anniversary and they politely declined. when they first got back together, i was surprised that their reunion extended beyond ATP to the making of a new album, but i was not surprised that it sounds like Polvo. what is amazing though is that they took what they used to do and both solidified it but also took it to this other level of heaviness that’s really pretty incredible, it may be their best record.

Q6. In a time when global music sales are way down, T&G are feeling the pinch and independent record shops are closing every day, what are Merge doing to future-proof themselves?

i don’t think you can really future-proof yourself, because you don’t know what the landscape will be like at any point down the line. i think one reason we’re still here is because frankly we’ve never looked too far into the future, we’ve always focused on doing what we are doing, putting out great records and making sure people can get them. we’re kind of old-fashioned in a way which maybe isn’t the way to be these days but so far it’s served us well. i wish i knew how to save record stores though, both because Merge needs them and also personally i don’t know what i would do if i couldn’t go to a record store. hard to get excited about a new batch of files on my hard drive.

Q7. Historically music releases have been complemented with artwork and ‘B-Sides’. How important is the record artwork/packaging/additional songs to you in these days of the digital download – (a flip page PDF just doesn’t cut it for me, you?) and do you think artwork and the ‘B-Side’ will die with the physical release?

It’s hard for me to get excited about some files on my hard drive or a PDF of some artwork… stuff gets lost in my computer and i forget about it. i know i sound like an old man but at a certain point i think there’s something “real” about a physical object that creates a connection between a listener and the music and creates a fan. we started the label as fans and we need fans to survive as a label. mp3s sound terrible. listening to music on an ipod or a laptop is incredibly anti-social and one of the best things about music to me is listening to it with other people, whether it’s in the background or whether you’re sitting on the floor in front of the record player putting on 45s. i don’t see that as old-fashioned so much as human. perhaps as Corey from Touch and Go told me a couple years ago at a certain point there will still be record stores but they’ll literally just be selling records again like they used to… i wish i knew how it will all play out!