SILVERSUN PICKUPS: Thank You For Today
Maybe it’s time for the Silversun Pickups to announce their double album and shave their heads- anything to shake things up- because on their fifth album Widow's Weeds, the Los Angeles quartet sound a little stuck. The sound is still darkly psychedelic, and occasionally striking, but their songcraft is getting a little flat- like a band that's not nearly as strange as it should be.
Silversun Pickups have always drawn comparisons to Smashing Pumpkins, and it's easy to hear: In addition to the fuzzy guitars, shoegazey lyrics and occasional string arrangements, both bands are led by a frontman whose unconventional vocals veer from angelic to androgynous to, for lack of a better word, whiny. Remember the first time you heard Lazy Eye way back in the day? Be honest, for a minute there, you thought you had discovered an amazing new Pumpkins tune.
But the one thing that has always separated one SP from the other: The Pumpkins (and specifically, Billy Corgan) became less interesting when they went BIG. Their very best work (I'm thinking of songs like Today, Zero, 1979) has always been terse, punky, compact, not overthought. It's the giant would-be concept albums and aborted song cycles that found them floundering to stay catchy.
The Pickups, on the other hand, are at their best when they shoot for the stars and defy convention. Take that breakthrough single Lazy Eye, for example- a meandering six-minute doodle with a barely identifiable chorus. It was perhaps the least formulaic single on their debut record, and yet somehow became a modern rock anthem.
Or take, for example, Skin Graph, the opening track on 2012's Neck of the Woods, or The Wild Kind, from 2015's Better Nature, two examples of fantastic songs on otherwise unessential albums. Both well over six minutes, with huge dynamic shifts, and no rush to fit into conventional verse/chorus songwriting patterns. The Pickups' most ambitious songs are almost always the record highlights, while a relatively straightforward, theoretically radio-ready track like the new single Freakzoid is far less memorable.
Like all of their records, Widow's Weeds rewards multiple listens- in this case, that's a nice way of saying that some of it eventually sinks in. Second track It Doesn't Matter Why finds frontman Brian Aubert getting aggressive with some of his vocal delivery, and it’s a welcome little reminder of how rousing they can be, sometimes. But more often it sounds like the band is holding back. Here’s hoping they soon announce their weird sprawling concept album, Volume. 1. Even if it’s only to show the Pumpkins- and us- that they still care. C
