Portastatic

Just when the once-offbeat Superchunk side project Portastatic was starting to get too conventionally rock, Mac McCaughan offers up his second soundtrack offering, once again for Canuck filmmaker Matthew Bissonnette. There’s barely any guitar to be heard here; the flutes and oboes are in full force. This isn’t one of those soundtracks where short themes are expanded into four-minute tracks; instead we get 22 tracks in 34 minutes, alternating between a wistful ’60s folkie chamber pop feel and a typical ’90s indie film soundtrack — think Hal Hartley. Hopefully this film isn’t as much of a clunker as their earlier collaboration, Looking for Leonard, as this music deserves better.