Without a Sound

Murph had left, so Mascis played the drums himself with Mike Johnson on bass. He called it the hardest album he had written; his father had died, and by the time it was made, he said, both his parents were dead. He wrote many of the songs while laid up with pneumonia for five weeks. It reached forty-four in America, their best placing of the 1990s, on the strength of Feel the Pain. Reviews were mixed, and Stereogum ranked it last of their albums in 2012, but Over Your Shoulder became an unexpected Japanese hit in 2019 after it was used in a boxing reality show.