On Come Pick Me Up, Superchunk's signature buzzy, excitable, poppy, Muppet-punk wail has mellowed and developed within a genre that typically crumbles with age. It helps that the North Carolina quartet has always celebrated the simple, Raymond Carver-ish pleasures of life--front porches, cast-iron chairs, spooning one's lover, "the clutter that is everyday." Singer-songwriter and guitarist Mac McCaughan has a firm ability to achieve nonhackneyed sentimentality inside mini-anthems that revolve around the repetition of simple melodies. It's a straightforward formula the band rarely strays from--there are the rocking songs and the mellow ones and both sound cool. Gone are the gerbil wails; Mr. Mac reveals a formidable, understated, whispery singing style throughout the disc. "Good Dreams" is a tightly coiled, guitar-driven rave-up which explodes into sugary melodies wrapped around the image "Hold me all night, give me good dreams." The other winning element on Come Pick Me Up is the classy, urbane production of Jim O'Rourke, who enlists various Chicago all-stars on cello, violin, sax, trumpet, and trombone. Mixed down low, the accompaniment slides unobtrusively into the group's sound. Blisteringly rocking and unassailably tasteful, you can file Superchunk's seventh album in that thin bin marked "punk rockers who've aged gracefully". --Mike McGonigal