The album was recorded at Duck Kee Studios in Mebane, North Carolina, during the summer of 1996, except tracks 4, 7-9, and 11, which were recorded on 4-track cassette on "Old NC 86."[citation needed] Matt McCaughan plays drums on many of the album's tracks.[6]
Critical reception[]
The Tucson Weekly wrote that "Portastatic seems to be what happens when an aging punk rocker and his ambitious musical vision 'mature': passivity, depression and terminal boredom."[7]Phoenix New Times called the album "a multilayered opus of pop precocity."[8]Paste deemed it the band's most underrated album, calling it "a downcast jazzy pop record that dabbles with electronic minimalism and features some of [Mac] McCaughan’s best song writing."[9]SF Weekly wrote that The Nature of Sap "finds the normally manic Superchunk frontman in an extended soporific spelunk through the caves of his waking dreams."[10]
