Silversun Pickups
Silversun Pickups avoid the sophomore slump with Swoon
Review By Matt Conner
Brian Aubert’s reaction is entirely natural. A common response to some semblance of achievement is to experience a sense of emptiness and wonder “Now what?” After all, once you actually climb the mountain, all you can do is come down. Not that Aubert is depressed, mind you. On the contrary, the front man and principal songwriter for Silversun Pickups has many reasons to laugh.
The band’s full-length debut, Carnavas, brought the group’s Smashing Pumpkins–influenced rock to the masses with two songs – “Lazy Eye” and “Well Thought Out Twinkles” – breaking the top 10 of Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. And now, they avoid the sophomore album slump with Swoon, which charted at #7 in its debut week as the new single “Panic Switch” climbed higher than any other Silversun track.
But as Aubert describes the songwriting and recording sessions for Swoon, he paints a picture of a band caught between enjoying the moment and wondering what’s next. The Los Angeles quartet was given considerable time to record Swoon and expectations ran high while the creative well ran dry. So the best place to start, Aubert explains, turned out to be the place they left off.
“With us, it was figuring out where we wanted to start,” says Aubert. “There are all kinds of things that you say that you want to do and you can put certain things in place early on, but once it starts going you're just along for the ride. It takes a shape of itself, and you're not sure exactly who you will be at the time you're writing it. So we started with the idea that we still really loved the sonics we were using. We loved the swishes and the swirls and the blankety guitars and all that. So we wanted to stay within that world, but just push things further in each direction – whether that's louder or schizophrenic to quieter and creepier.”
The early response to Swoon boasts heaps of critical praise and for good reason. The album displays a band comfortable in its own sound and the expansive nature of the new tracks, especially “Panic Switch” and “Surrounded” reveal new highs and lows than anything previously released. It’s a work equally aggressive as it is sensitive and that’s something Aubert says was intentional.
That’s something we really thought about – the romance of it all,” explains Aubert. “When we said things were going to be bigger, that's what we meant, but not in the way that people normally think. When you say 'bigger,' people think you mean 'heavier.' And it is heavier in places, but we meant it more in a grander kind of sense. I think the artwork really shows that. Some people think it's a bouquet of flowers and others think it's blood splattered. And that's something we've really enjoyed.”
As Aubert references the fan response, it’s the listener’s ability to find meaning in all layers of Silversun’s music that excites him the most.
“I love when people read into things, because they're right,” she laughs. “If you see something in something else, then you're right because there is no right answer. Even in songs and lyrics, I obviously have my thing, but if you take those words and feelings and you come up with your own meaning, then that is also correct. People have gone so far as to say Carnavas is very masculine and there's even a phallic symbol on the record, while Swoon is softer and more feminine and the art is like a vagina. When you hear that and look at it, you're like, 'Yeah.' It's interesting that those things weren't necessarily planned but that people can find those things.”
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