Silversun Pickups, Swoon"There's No Secrets This Year" is the track that opens the new album from the Silversun Pickups, and if you ask me what the secret we aren't keeping is, it's the success the band is going to have off of their sophomore release.
I see big things on the horizon for this band.
The Pickups have maintained the ability to make beauty out of noise that was so present on their fist album Carnavas, but on Swoon they have applied a much needed maturity to their work. The first single "Panic Switch" is a gleaming example of the band's mainstream potential. The song opens with a crunchy (and yes, Smashing Pumpkinsesque) guitar tone that sets the tension of a well crafted verse, building towards a chorus of such melody that it could melt your brain! Once you have pieced your mind back together from that, listen on...
"Draining" is a spacey, trippy track that allows your jets to cool from your last melody meltdown, and "Sort Of" picks up the tempo and tention again as a friendly reminder that the album is only half done.
There are plenty of nods-to-the-Ninties tracks on this album, sounding more like a work produced in 1998 than 2008, but using their construction of noise to their advantage the Silversun Pickups have really created something fresh for todays airwaves, and I expect them to benefit from that. To get you in to the album, my suggestion is to listen to "Growing Old is Getting Old" with headphones on, uninterrupted, observing the band's well-exercised methods of tension and release, and a chorus melody so fine that you would sell your own sister to have written it yourself (sorry Kate and Caroline).
Key Tracks: "Panic Switch", "Growing Old is Getting Old"
My favorite band to come out in the last three years...hands down. Saw them at a hole-in-the-wall Boise venue right when "Carnavas" came out and nobody was paying attention yet. Amazing show! New record gets listened to daily since its release here at work...have to give a shout out to track 4, "It's Nice To Know You Work Alone"...beautiful build and sets up the next track "Panic Switch: quite well. Also, if you are a fan of the TV show lost, listen closely to the last 15 seconds of "It's Nice To Know..." --- there is definitely a musical shout out to the show's pre-commercial scene closing audio. Muah Chip, I love you!
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