Mac McCaughan starts out Superchunk's gig at the Middle East in Boston by good-naturedly taunting the crowd. The band doesn't take the stage until midnight, which gives singer/guitarist McCaughan time to catch Bruce Sprinsteen at the Fleet Center across town. The crowd isn't moving to his satisfaction, and he lets them know he won't let the Boss's forty-something crowd outbounce them.

After all, the Chapel Hill quartet's popularity over the past ten years is partly based on their explosive, energetic live shows. Read through the press on Superchunk, and you'll find that every critic and reporter feels compelled to mention either bouncing or "pogoing" in reference to the band's sound and energy. That's no accident. The band has cultivated their punk-pop sound since their self-titled debut album hit the shelves in 1990. Songs like "Package Thief" and "Hyper Enough" are insideously catchy, enough to ensare the stiffest rock critic and get them moving their feet and bobbing their heads.

Originally, the band was lumped in with the first wave of the now-mainstream "alternative" bands in the early `90s. Though they were pegged for stardom by some, they didn't pay much attention to the buzz.

"It seemed like the press was covering their asses by naming a lot of bands 'the next big thing,'" says drummer Jon Wurster. Guitarist Jim Wilbur concurs. "It was like, us, Pavement, Sebedoh, Screaming Trees..." But while most of Seattle's heavy hitters were being charged with leading some "alternative revolution," Mac and bassist Laura Ballance were creating Merge records, the label they have called home for more than ten years. And while most of the grunge gods have burnt up or copped out, and countless numbers of smaller bands have been chewed up and spit out of the major label shark tank, Superchunk has built a loyal following and a catalogue of albums and singles to make any band jealous.

Wilbur has never been comfortable with the term "alternative" anyway. "It's just silly. To call yourself alternative means you're reactionary. You're not really who you are. It was never a good term. Never liked it. I never thought of us as being alternative. We were like, we're not alternative, we're just us. And now, the bands that were called alternative are mainstream. But they're still called alternative. It doesn't mean anything. What's it an alternative to, if you hear it on every radio station?"

Though Superchunk draws as much inspiration from the pop worlds of Elvis Costello or Pete Townshend as from The Minutemen or The Pixies, they still have a firm grasp of the punk ethic that first motivated them. "Punk defines a spirit or an attitude behind what you do. There are punk bands that don't sound very punk. I think we're a punk band. We're punk rock. We sink or swim by our own vision, whatever that is."

The band has a hard act to ballance, juggling Superchunk's own touring and recording schedule and the needs of the record label. It would have been fairly easy to cave into pressure to cash in with a major label and leave Merge behind. But Superchunk has too much freedom to call their own shots with Merge, and that has made the difference.

"We want to sell lots of records, we want to make lots of money, but what we really want to do is sell lots of records and make lots of money doing what we want to do," says Wilbur. "There are bands that are like, this is the way to make money, is to play this kind of music. We want our kind of music to be popular. But if it's not you can't say, 'Oh, we'll just change.' That won't work, either."

Superchunk's dense sound thrives on each member's contribution to the whole. Wilbur and McCaughan's guitars duel with Ballance's bass, interlocking and fighting for space over Wurster's smart, driving drumming. Though McCaughan writes the lyrics and handles almost all of the lead vocals, the band writes the music together.

"The way we write songs, it's spontaneous," says Wilbur. "It's kind of like jamming, but we're not really good enough to do that. So we kind of just noodle around until we hear something that sounds good. And then when we have the parts, we arrange them. Nobody's really the lead instrument, because it's hard to tell who started playing what. Sometimes it's the bass, sometimes it's my guitar, sometimes it's Mac's guitar. And whatever someone else plays changes what you're playing. It's sort of weird because we're not really thinking about it. We write a song a day, a song every hour and a half."

Superchunk has been Mac, Laura, Jim, and Jon since 1991, when Jon replaced original drummer Chuck Garrison touring in support of "No Pocky for Kitty." Jim had replaced original guitarist Jack McCook when McCook decided he didn't want to tour for the first album. The stable line-up has allowed the band to grow as a unit -- a luxury other bands have not enjoyed. "With the same four people, after a while, you don't think about it as much. You don't have to think about what everyone else is doing as much and you can just concentrate on what you're doing. I think it makes it more comfortable."

"I think because it's the same four people, it also means that you're sort of ready to go in different directions around the same time. We're lucky that there's not one of us that's just saying, 'I just want to keep making the same record. Why do have to do all of this new stuff?' Everyone is into the idea of doing new things."

Their latest, "Come Pick Me Up," ups the ante a bit. The album, their ninth full length, expands on the textural details the band has been adding since "Here's Where the Strings Come In." While that album didn't actually feature stings, "Come Pick Me Up" is filled with cellos and violins, as well as horns and occasional filters and effects. "A lot of that has to do with Jim O'Rourke, the guy who produced the record," says Wilbur. "We wrote the songs the same way we always write songs, together. And he's just really good at making space. Because we're pretty dense. When you add those extra instruments, you have to find a place for everything."

There has never been too much empty space on a Superchunk album, but "Indoor Living" seemed a bit sparse by the band's standards. So it's not surprising that the band was able to find a way to fill in those gaps on "Come Pick Me Up."

"So Convinced" builds up sound by sound, starting out with a filtered drum beat, then adding bass and vocals, then a wandering guitar line. When everything is in place, the beat explodes into doubletime with a bubbling keyboard riff. That energy flows into the churning guitar intro to "Hello Hawk," which gives way to a delicate ballance of strings and horns, over an ever-driving beat. "There's also a lot more jarring dynamics in a certain way," says Wilbur. "So if that's airy and light, it's also more defined."

None of the new elements seem forced, as often happens when strings and orchestras are added as a gimmick. And the band didn't sacrifice their sound to accomodate a new idea. On "1000 Pounds," the sound of a violin intertwines with the guitar melody, giving it support where it needs it, and then backing out for most of the rest of the song. The same holds true for the horns on "Pink Clouds." They pop up for the pre-chorus and then get out of the way the thickly-distorted guitar that carries the chorus. When they return, it's for a joyous, trombone-heavy outro.

Still, it wouldn't be a Superchunk album without at least one straight-up, punk-pop classic. "Good Dreams" rocks hard enough for an entire album, and it got the Boston crowd bouncing.

It might take a bit more work to tour in support of "Come Pick Me Up" than with previous albums, though. While the strings and horns add depth to an already dense sound, they also make the songs harder to duplicate live. The Boston dates are only three days into the tour, and Wurster laughs when asked how the band will handle some of the new material. "We're still working that out."

The show goes smoothly regardless, with tunes like "Pink Clouds" and "Hello Hawk" taking on a sharper edge. If there's one thing Superchunk has in abundance, it's energy, and that becomes the focus of the live show. "We have a distinct difference between live and record, anyway," says Wilbur. "Our live shows are much more punk rock and energetic. And our records, we try to make good records that you'd want to listen to more than once."