“Working out of Sounds” could also be an ill-advised tune title for a band celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its first album; that is very true for musicians who’ve handled their debut as a sacred blueprint for all of the information which have adopted. So give Silversun Pickups some credit score: They spend their seventh album, Tenterhooks—which comprises a tune with the aforementioned title—circling via the identical sounds they’ve mined for 20 years, blissfully oblivious to the irony.
Not that Silversun Pickups act as in the event that they’re middle-aged on Tenterhooks. In contrast to so many rock bands with members dealing with their 50s, they don’t embrace new fashions in a frantic try to stay related. Nor do they spend the document gazing on the previous and mulling their very own mortality. No, the L.A. quartet sticks to their tried and true, mixing dreamy harmonies and blissed-out guitars as if no time had handed for the reason that Nineties.
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There’s one small drawback: Silversun Pickups themselves weren’t a part of the dream of the ’90s, a proven fact that provides to the creeping feeling of stasis on Tenterhooks. When Silversun Pickups surfaced through the nice alt-rock revival of the late 2000s, their insistent rhythms and underlying sense of vigor made Carnavas, their 2006 debut, really feel contemporary. Over the following years, their rising professionalism created a gulf between their underground inspirations and their very own output. The chasm solely grew after they struck up a collaboration with Butch Vig, the producer behind alt-rock landmarks by Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and his personal band, Rubbish, his studio abilities smoothing out any remaining tough edges within the group.
Tenterhooks is the third Silversun Pickups album in a row to be produced by Vig, and there’s a palpable sense of ease to the partnership. He swaddles their overdriven swirl in comforting garments, weaving fuzzy riffs and candied electronics into Brian Aubert and Nikki Monninger’s sighing vocals. There are shifts in tempo and tone: “Au Revoir Reservoir” performs like heightened nocturnal new wave, giving technique to the gallop of “Wakey Wakey,” which in flip leads into the glassy shimmer of “Witness Mark.” However Vig’s manufacturing is seamless sufficient that Tenterhooks begins to really feel like one steady tune.
There are pleasures available inside these spacey spirals. For listeners of a sure disposition, the wedding of dream-pop harmonies and distorted guitars can really feel as welcoming as a heat tub. However the familiarity can even reveal how the years are beginning to pile up for Silversun Pickups. It isn’t that they lack urgency—they by no means specialised in catharsis, anyway—however that they’re circling the identical concepts they’ve had for the reason that begin. Vig’s masterly manufacturing provides the album a seasoned gleam and punch, however his period-specific particulars solely exacerbate the weary undercurrent on Tenterhooks; it makes the album really feel stagnant, as if the Silversun Pickups are caught in an infinite loop. Possibly that is an inevitable drawback of buying and selling within the music of the previous: At a sure level, you are certain to expire of sounds.
