The Washington Post May 20, 1994, Friday, Final Edition SECTION: WEEKEND; PAGE N17 LENGTH: 270 words HEADLINE: Superchunk Lets Songs Sing Out SERIES: Occasional BYLINE: Mark Jenkins BODY: THOUGH NOT untempered by feedback, Superchunk's new album, "Foolish," finds the group's sound sufficiently cleaned up so that the songs shine through. The first album the North Carolina quartet has made since abandoning Matador for its own Merge label, this is noisy in places -- "Kicked In," for example -- but the guitar clamor doesn't overwhelm the band's folkish neo-punk tunes. Those tunes still aren't overly assertive: "Why Do You Have to Put a Date on Everything" owes its anthemic feel more to the surging guitar than the vocal, and such appealing songs as "Water Wings" and "Like a Fool" submerge their melodies in the widely emulated Husker Du manner. The band can't quite pull off slow ones such as "In a Stage Whisper" yet, but "Foolish" is a significant step in Superchunk's evolution from noise to song band. One of the rowdier bands on New Zealand's Flying Nun label, the 3Ds have also gotten gentler. Parts of "The Venus Trail," the band's first album to be released by Merge, are as jagged as ever, but some songs offer Celtic-folkish melodies more reminiscent of such Down Under peers as the Bats. The transition between snarling rockers such as "Hey Seuss" and "Philadelphia Rising" (sung by guitarists David Mitchell and David Saunders) and quieter numbers like "The Golden Grove" (sung by bassist Denise Roughan) is sudden, but the variety is welcome.