Portastatic - The Summer of the Shark
(Merge)
Is there anything more disappointing, musically speaking, than watching an artist evolve on one album only to collapse back into old patterns the next time around? It has been more than my college career since the last genuine Portastatic album, and in that time I've seen Superchunk, for better or worse, grow, softening the sound, yet still retaining some semblance of their former selves—what the usual pundits describe as the maturing process. However, this "Yo La Tengo-ization," an unwieldy coinage, yet moderately appropriate due to the probable causal link between Here's to Shutting Up's recording and McCaughan's helper status on the And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out tour, missed its namesake's ability to excise the indie rock in favor of a more progressive sound, and therefore seemed to merely mimic Kaplan, et al.'s striving for a more meaningful sound rather than being the natural outgrowth of Superchunk's development. Regardless, this maturation, coupled with The Nature of Sap's brilliance, set high expectations for The Summer of the Shark, which sadly, is merely an atavistic throwback to McCaughan's earlier catalog.
This is not to say it's a bad album; like most of McCaughan's work, it's decent pop made unique by his interesting fauxsetto voice. However, that alpinic larynx cannot carry the work on its own, and there are a few major things wrong with it that relegate this album to the status of the nostalgically enjoyable. Firstly is the glut of basic two chord tonic/sub-dominant progressions—the staple of any pop diet—that inundate the album. This of course not only reverses the trend McCaughan's displayed over the course of Portastatic's career, but threatens to be some of the most simplistic music he's written in a long time. Compounding this is the lack of diverse instrumentation, with the exception of a few songs, and—despite the crisp production—the half-finished feel many of these songs radiate. The music simply fails to be really compelling, and while most people feel some kind of emotional resonance with pop songs, just based on cultural conventions, there is nothing much more here than a shallow end.
Despite these faults, I cannot help enjoying many of the songs. The aforementioned "Oh Come Down" goes through a few changes that make it interesting including a very unexpected Beatles-esqe transformation in the middle, and "Don't Disappear", "Chesapeake", and "Noisy Night" all have great vocal melodies and contain some of the more adventurous song-structures on The Summer of the Shark. Even though McCaughan's lyrics, as usual, dwell in first-person "talking to the probable girlfriend" narratives, there is enough attention paid to poetic devices to escape from the all-too-familiar traps of storytelling lyrics. While nothing new is being accomplished, it's pleasant enough.
Honestly though, in the end, I'm not sure how to recommend this. I'm a big Portastatic fan, but I'm extremely disappointed by this. Does this mean that those who like more conventional pop songs will like this? I've really never felt like Portastatic was a repository for rejected Superchunk songs, but this album feels like it's just stuff the other three didn't want to work on. "Swimming Through the Tires" even sounds like a cut off of Here's to Shutting Up. So, perhaps you'll like The Summer of the Shark if you enjoyed that.
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