Last month, Mike Krol and Mac McCaughan joined forces as Mac Krol, sharing the A-side of their debut 7-inch “For Some Other Reason” b/w “Fair Warning” and “What Would You Say?” All three songs are now available wherever you listen to music, and the 7-inch is available to purchase in the Merge store (along with the complete Mike Krol catalog)!

The collaboration began its life in 2015, when Krol and his bandmates Elliott Kozel, Phil Mahlstadt, and Michael Sienkowski decamped to San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone after recording Turkey, intending to turn “a handful of riffs and ideas” into a full record. 

“The plan was to take the rough mixes home and write lyrics to record them later,” Krol explains. “However, once I got home and listened to the songs, I quickly realized that most of them were in the wrong key for my voice. So I filed them away to deal with later, and eventually lost interest.”

In 2020, Krol rediscovered the instrumental tracks on an old hard drive and asked Mac if he would write some words to sing on top of them. “He said he hated writing lyrics and politely declined,” Krol recalls. “A few days later, three songs showed up with completed lyrics and iconic Mac McCaughan singing and shredding all over them. I was blown away!”

No longer an abandoned recording session, Mac Krol arrives, sounding like lost Portastatic or Superchunk B-sides, as vital and inventive as you’d expect from a dream pairing like Krol and McCaughan. “Without Mac,” Krol says, “these songs would still be discarded instrumentals, so I’m very thankful that he brought them across the finish line so they can finally be heard!”

Speaking of Mac, Superchunk is kicking back into gear, with a run of US shows this September (featuring support from Aussie garage punk stars Cable Ties) followed by their first UK/EU tour in five years in November, celebrating the 30th anniversary of On the Mouth. In addition, our friends at Bandbox announced an exclusive pressing of 1995’s Here’s Where the Strings Come In! And that’s just the Superchunk news we can tell you about right now—stay tuned for more!

Superchunk on tour:
Sep 08 Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall*
Sep 09 Baltimore, MD – Ottobar*
Sep 10 Ardmore, PA – Ardmore Music Hall*
Sep 12 South Burlington, VT – Higher Ground*
Sep 13 Portland, ME – SPACE Gallery*
Sep 14 Hamden, CT – Space Ballroom*\
Sep 15 Woodstock, NY – Colony*
Sep 16 New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom*
Oct 11 Asheville, NC – The Grey Eagle
Oct 12 Charlotte, NC – Neighborhood Theatre
Oct 14 Durham, NC – That Music Fest
Nov 02 Berlin, DE – Lido
Nov 03 Bielefeld, DE – Forum
Nov 04 Schorndorf, DE – Manufaktur
Nov 05 Bologna, IT – Improved Sequence Fest
Nov 06 Zurich, CH – El Lokal
Nov 09 London, UK – Bush Hall
Nov 10 Bristol, UK – Strange Brew
Nov 11 Leeds, UK – The Brudenell Social Club
Nov 12 Manchester, UK – Night & Day
Nov 13 Brighton, UK – Concorde 2
Nov 15 Haarlem, NL – Patronaat
* w/ Cable Ties