Superchunk’s “Staying Home” stands as a brisk, rambunctious outlier on the North Carolina vets’ Essential 10th album, I Hate Music. Now the 75-second track has a disruptive set of visuals to match.
Directed by conceptual artist Taiyo Kimura, the video functions as a collage brought to life. Stop-motion effects animate a pile of clothes and splice together paper cut-outs of the band. Eggs get smashed via a hand-operated lotto machine. And someone dons a homemade mask of frontman Mac McCaughan to sit down for a stomach-turning meal. (Your next Halloween costume? Probably not.)
“We didn’t talk about any ideas,” McCaughan told ARTINFO, “and when Taiyo sent it he warned me, like, ‘At one point, there’s someone wearing a mask of you, I’m eating curry out of a toilet,’ something like that. I was like, well, we’ll just have to wait and see. People around the office are like, ‘I can’t stop thinking about eating out of a toilet now.'”
Watch the clip above and scroll down for Superchunk’s tour dates. The indie-rock icons have a handful of U.S. gigs lined up, plus a September 27 appearance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. For an in-depth look at Superchunk, their Merge Records label, and the changing cultural landscape of North Carolina, read SPIN’s feature Merge Country: How Superchunk’s Label Turned Durham Into a Thriving Indie-Rock Company Town.
Superchunk tour dates:
September 21 – Byers, CO @ Riot Fest
September 23 – Charlottesville, VA @ The Southern
September 24 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
September 26 – Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
September 27 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
September 28 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
September 29 – Washington, D.C. @ 9:30 Club
November 10 – Melbourne, Australia @ Harvest Festival
November 16 – Sydney, Australia @ Harvest Festival
November 17 – Brisbane, Australia @ Harvest Festival
November 29 – December 1 – Camber Sands, U.K. @ All Tomorrow’s Parties’ End of an Era Pt. 2
December 3 – London, U.K. @ Electric Ballroom
