Superchunk’s tenth album I Hate Music will be released on August 20 and today they’ve released its first single “FOH.” Based on the album’s dismissive title, you might think that the song stands for “Fuck Outta Here,” but the acronym is a bit of a bait-and-switch. It stands instead for “Front of the House,” a colloquial term for the front of a venue. This all makes sense: the title I Hate Music is itself a misnomer, as the band explained when it announced the album, saying that it’s “an album about love more than anything else: love of life, love of living, love of people, and yeah, love of music. It defies its own title so completely and diligently that it never even seems like a fair fight.”
As such, “FOH” operates as a sort of pre-show pump-up jam, powered by the same jittery moves and live-wire excitement that electrifies the air before the audience fills into the venue. Frontman Mac McCaughan sings of a spinning head, but one with a singular focus: “How’s everything at the front of the house?”
