Description
Throughout his career fronting Superchunk and Portastatic, Mac McCaughan has channeled more than his share of angst into a microphone, resulting in undeniable rock anthems. So how can a voice so familiar to others still seem foreign to its owner? On The Sound of Yourself, McCaughans second release under his own name, he explores that question fully, shooting his voice through a prism and refracting it across these songs in new and rewarding ways. In January 2021, McCaughan found himself at his home studio in Chapel Hill North Carolina staring down a clean slate after wrapping a film score and several other music projects. His thought process was simple: Each day is blurring into the next, so what are we doing today? How can I disrupt this? I think what resulted was a theme of subdued… joy is the wrong word, but its at least comforting if not propulsive to have something open-ended to work on every day without any kind of structure or deadline or rules. McCaughan leaned into allowing randomness and accidents to catalyze his compositions. Where a guitar riff might typically start a Superchunk song, an indistinguishable loop found on an old sampler dictates the mood on Found Cricket, and simply opening up his studio to the woods outside channels Another Green World on 36 and Rain. Instrumentals make up nearly half of The Sound of Yourself, and are integral to the albums atmosphere. The albums title track asks, Do you ever get used to the sound of yourself? For an artist like Mac McCaughan, the answer lies in experimentationtesting his voice in a different light, deconstructing it, sometimes relegating it elsewhere or removing it altogether as the piece dictates. He knows that within the creative pursuit of an album as illuminating as The Sound of Yourself, familiarity reveals itself in the unknown.
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