Superchunk Song Review Project 7: "Fishing"

This is almost certainly the angriest Superchunk song. The main riff is nearly Danzig-esque in its simple minor "E-chord" evil-ness. Superchunk frequently make use of the "I'm striding briskly towards my destination and I'm pretty agitated" drumbeat, and I think this is the earliest instance of it. The whole verse part is just so solidly mean sounding, its hard not to respond to it. Its the sort of song that makes you want to put on an angry face and jump in the mosh pit!

There're a lot of overdubbed feeding back guitars on this recording. I particularly like the one that lasts most of the way through the first verse and chorus. It surrounds you and makes you feel like the song is inescapable! LOVE IT. This song also has a dueling guitar solo. In this case its that sort of solo where its not particularly fast or melodic, but you can tell the players are just strangling the neck of the guitar, trying to to kill the damn thing! Also: pick slides! Also also: they count off "1-2-3-4" before going into the final chorus. This song is so punk.

Like a lot of their other early songs, the vox are done in a really great faux-punk rock sneer and in this case the effect is particularly good. The nerd rage comes across as being really legit. Not tough but pissed, you know? What the hell he's singing about escapes me even though I've heard this song about 1000 times.

Song structure: ABABAB

A=verse, B=chorus.

If you haven't seen the video, I strongly recommend taking a look, as it's totally preposterous: it involves the band drinking milk during a very intense looking hayride.