Silversun Pickups ‘Better Nature’ Review: slick yet catchy, the group’s latest release offers huge pop hooks with a streamlined sound.
[rating=3]
“This album is like its own quantum universe. It’s kind of unstable.” That’s Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert trying to explain the immediate takeaway of the band’s latest album, ‘Better Nature’ (out September 25th on the group’s New Machine Recordings label).
While it may feel unstable in its melancholy lyrical content, it feels like a natural evolution from the band’s 2012 album ‘Neck of The Woods’, owing largely to reuniting with producer Jacknife Lee (who also has a songwriting credit) and aided by mixer Alan Moulder (My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails).
Click here for my Neck of The Woods Review
That album showed the group beginning to transition away from grunge/shoegaze guitar textures to a more synth-pop flavored sound. And ‘Better Nature’ goes even further-with guitars taking a more understated role to keyboardist Joe Lester’s vibrant hallucinatory synth-textures.
‘Better Nature’s’ lead single, ‘Circadian Rhythms (Last Dance)‘ is indicative of this change, all sleek and droning, complimenting the dreamy dovetailing vocals of Aubert and bassist Nicki Donniger. It’s one of their most blissfully catchy tunes to date.
Likewise, ‘Pins and Needles’ stop start rhythms and synth stabs recall ‘Neck’s’ hit single ‘Bloody Mary’, with its’ breezy chorus fueled by Aubert’s plaintive vocal delivery.
This electro-pop slickness extends to ‘Friendly Fire’, which retrofits a standard issue SSPU melody for the dance floor, or more notably, ‘Ragamuffin’, with a shimmering New Wave soundscape that recalls both The Eurythmics’ ‘Here Comes The Rain Again’, as well as their ‘Neck’ track ‘Here We Are (Chancer).’
The band dial-up the angst on ‘Nightlight‘ with ambiguous lyrics that suggest a disorienting, dark night of the soul: “Putting more makeup on the masks that we wear/Turning our night lights on in the daytime to scare.”
The most dynamic track, ‘Tape Deck’ splits the difference between the organic and synthetic, where xylophone-esque textures give way to Christopher Guanlao’s propulsive drums, washes of piano and Aubert and Donniger wailing about love gone bad: “This used to be fun/back when we were young.”
‘Connection’, the album’s best track, is also its most insistent: an industrial surge that bleeds guitar and air siren electronics together, recalling Depeche Mode at their most distressed.
But that melding of guitar and synth, while novel at first, can frustrate in large doses, as it’s reflected throughout the album. Lee often makes both instruments fight for space within the same sonic frequency. This makes one long for the more fuzz-tastic guitar blasts from the group’s earlier releases.
But for fans nostalgic of that era, the group throws out two sonic lifelines: ‘Cradle (Better Nature)’ offers moments of saturated distorted bombast (albeit dialed down), and the epic album closer ‘The Wild Kind’, recalls their transcendent song ‘Common Reactor’ from their 2006 début ‘Carnavas’ (while adding some U2 guitar jangle for good measure).
In the end ‘Better Nature’ offers a solid collection of earworms, and proves that Silversun Pickups can sound contemporary with ease. But the lack of orgiastic amp distortion makes one hope they can re-embrace their full-blown guitar furor the next time around.