“Bruised Lung.” “No Hope.” “Care Less.” “Climb the Walls.” “Everybody Dies.” Scanning the tracklist of Songs in the Key of Yikes, one is given to wonder: Is Superchunk okay? In a world that’s arguably darker than the one that greeted Wild Loneliness in 2022 or What a Time to Be Alive in 2018, are any of us okay?

“It’s always been the case that everyone is going through something that you may not be aware of,” notes Mac McCaughan. “This is currently more true than ever—but also the case that we are all going through some things together. In the face of that, what good is art and where is happiness found? (Spoiler alert: I don’t know.)”

In seeking an answer, Songs in the Key of Yikes unleashes a sound that is triumphant and bright in the darkness, Majesty Shredding in overdrive. Lead single “Is It Making You Feel Something” sets the tone early with the band—McCaughan, Laura Ballance, Jim Wilbur, and Laura King—building an anthem out of the potential for joy, diving into slop-polluted waters (“now fakes are faking everything / that once made your poor heart sing”) and emerging with a pearl.

“No Hope” is similarly resilient, McCaughan’s lyrics painting a crushing scene before entering its titular refrain. He repeats the phrase nine times, pauses a beat, and transforms its sentiment entirely, breaking the chant with the line “and here we are singing.” The lyric is sharp, at once a simple observation and a profound statement of being, the song’s crushing nights and endless days no less so on its account, but McCaughan’s voice finds a certain sweetness in having endured, and continuing to do so.

Paradoxically, the energy of Songs in the Key of Yikes borders on and sometimes spills into euphoria, as in “Stuck in a Dream” which emerges like a mirage-born oasis between “Everybody Dies” and “Train on Fire,” a full-sprint crowd pleaser suitable for pogoing in the pit. “Care Less” is a dark, comic mirror to that energy, a garage-y jam in which an acid-tongued McCaughan seeks refuge from the storm by pretending it’s not raging right outside his door.

This strategy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t. It’s a song on a Superchunk album, and Superchunk albums are arguments against insularity, parties large enough to host everyone. This one, in addition to welcoming Laura King into the fold after two years as their touring drummer, features contributions from Rosali Middleman (“Bruised Lung” and “Everybody Dies”), Bella Quinlan and Holly Thomas of Quivers (“Cue”), and touring bassist Betsy Wright (“Care Less”). The album was engineered by Paul Voran (The Menzingers, Hurray for the Riff Raff) and Eli Webb, and mixed by Mike Montgomery (The Breeders, Protomartyr).

Together, they reach no conclusions on what good art is in the face of crisis. They also make great art. Songs in the Key of Yikes is a signature Superchunk album: visceral and timeless and catchy as hell—a cathartic balm for these oppressive times that will feel even better once we’ve figured our collective shit out.

Baseball caps and horsetails, porch swings and “all else that fails”—these are the lyrical stomping grounds of Case Oats, the group led by Casey Walker and Spencer Tweedy. Transplanted from Missouri to Chicago, Walker has a knack for getting to the “gooey heart” of relationships and experience, of bringing a city-dwelling life back down to earth. With an unadorned delivery and an unflinching eye, Walker relates songs about moving on, about growing up in the Midwest, and about loyalty to desperately flawed people and gratitude for pain, for the way things end up.
 

Case Oats’ yet-to-be-announced debut album is a well-defined, inviting labor of love. Light on pastiche and heavy on intention, their arrangements, backed by a group of longtime collaborators, put Case Oats on a continuum of porch-sitting, familiar songwriters.