Majesty Shredding

Critical reception

Majesty Shredding received widespread critical acclaim upon its release, holding a score of 83 out of 100 on the review aggregate site Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim". Majesty Shredding was ranked number 25 on Rolling Stone's list of the 30 Best Albums of 2010.

Marc Hawthorne of The A.V. Club felt that the album was among the best work of the band's career, stating that "Majesty Shredding lives up to its name and doesn’t waste much time catching its breath, and along the way Superchunk delivers something that used to be expected of the band: an album on which every song sounds as inspired as the next one." Jon Dolan of Rolling Stone wrote: "No youngsters this side of Arcade Fire articulate ambivalence with such skill or heart. Few even try." Jessica Hopper of The Village Voice called the album "vigorous and kicking, much more so than you'd have right or reason to expect out of a band this deep into their career. A band still sparking with ideas. Two decades in, it's still duty now for the future." The New York Times' Jon Caramanica wrote that the band had "recaptured its grasp on bright, puckish and punkish power pop with no apparent effort." Critic Mischa Pearlman noted the album's bittersweet lyrical content in his review for BBC Music: "Although that jubilant, sunny feeling permeates all of these 11 songs, it's coupled with a sense of jaded, measured hindsight – that, despite the open, blue North Carolina sky above them and the youthful energy it inspires, you can't recapture the past."

Track listing

All tracks written by Mac McCaughan, Laura Ballance, Jon Wurster and Jim Wilbur.