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New Release: Silversun Pickups ‘Neck of the Woods’
On Tuesday of this week, Silversun Pickups released their album, Neck of the Woods.
Apparently, it’s kind of a thing for reviewers to point out—for good or ill—that Silversun Pickups have a sound reminiscent of the 90’s. I did it, too, simply by bringing attention to the fact that this seems to be a thing. And it is a thing that obscures the fact that something that sounds-like isn’t the same as something that-is. Silversun Pickups may remind you, the quickly aging indie kid, of some band you loved in high school, but they aren’t. If nothing else, Neck of the Woods takes that sounds-like thing associated with this band and develops it into something else, something new.
I always get the feeling when listening to the Silversun Pickups that they are playing from a concrete apartment block, attempting to contain the sheer force of their music so as not to disturb the neighbors. And yet, inevitably (for it almost cannot be helped) their noise increases, the sound tears out of the quiet, propelled by the force of the feeling being expressed, only to be reigned back in, contained again by concrete walls and thin plaster.
Whatever or whoever it is that Silversun Pickups reminds you of, what they do best is place the quiet and the silences alongside the raw and cutting sounds of rock n’ roll. This technique was what I found so compelling about “The Royal We” from their last album, Swoon, when I first heard it on the radio. And that defining technique is exploited here on Neck of the Woods to its fullest effect. It is not just a technique that defines the songs on the album, but the album itself. The unbridled panic of “Busy Bees” gives way to the more muted “Here We Are (Chancer)” just as the album’s first track, “Skin Graph,” begins with a slow, almost distant hum only to rise, louder and louder, until it breaks into a buzz, a pulse, and then the song itself. Call it ebb and flow, call it expand and contract, call it the 90’s, but I call it amazing. I call it a melancholy you want to dance to.
Can we talk about the bass in the opening bars of “Mean Spirits”? Or the way it echoes your heartbeat in a kind of cadenza in the middle of “Simmer,” a sound that is heard like that word means? Maybe we should talk about the New Wave quality of “The Pit” or “Bloody Mary”?
Or maybe you should just listen to the album. Listen to the album, and then you can tell me how much you agree with me when I say that Neck of the Woods demonstrates why Silversun Pickups is one of my favorite bands of the last few years.
You can check out this album on their website here: silversunpickups.com