Ever since the success of 2006’s Carnavas, the Silversun Pickups have had a hard time leaving the safety of their comfort zone. Without slipping completely into self-parody, each of the Los Angeles-based rock band’s subsequent releases has seen them tempering their winning formula with only cautious variations on Brian Aubert’s breathy, quavering vocals and their thick Gaussian blur of sonic distortion and reverb. The group’s dalliance with Depeche Mode-style synth-pop on 2015’s Better Nature boasted tantalizing moments of sparkling elegance and pulse-racing throttle, but its dependence on booming yet generically applied electronics left the album feeling vacant, even lethargic.
Enter Butch Vig. For a band that can’t quite quit its love for ’90s alternative rock, their choice to enlist the production wizard behind Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, and the Foo Fighters seems only fitting. But their fifth album, Widow’s Weeds, is anything but a sentimental rehash of the good ol’ days. Instead, the album profits mightily from the veteran producer’s ability to transition established acts into more mature, self-assured iterations of themselves, without scrapping the essence of what made those bands great in the first place.
Widow’s Weeds thus grants us backstage access to the band at its most vulnerable and personal, but also its most clear-eyed and intrepid. After years of lackluster reviews and a string of personal struggles, the Silversun Pickups were perfectly poised for renewal and, as Aubert croons on “Don’t Know Yet,” the band has worked hard to “reboot the machine.” Under Vig’s steady hand, they’ve stripped away the stylistic accretions of their previous albums and come up with a much tighter, more identifiably rock sound. From its opening notes, the album presents a band brimming with reclaimed confidence and vitality, one that need no longer take refuge behind endless waves of feedback and sonic distractions.
Right out of the gate, “Neon Wound,” as it chugs along to the metronomic precision of Christopher Guanlao’s drums, unrolls the perfectly pointed welcome mat for those familiar with the Silversun Pickups. “Hello, my friend,” Aubert sings, almost winkingly, “It’s nice to see you again/Now that we’re on the mend.” The song’s taut spareness gradually drifts off into what sounds like little more than a listless B-side from Better Nature, but “It Doesn’t Matter Why” hurries in to take up the slack in full-charging tempo.
To be sure, Aubert and the gang have given up no ground in creating soundscapes of great power and intensity, sculpting with staccato rhythms and relentless builds the jumpy, nervous tension of a downed power line. Where on previous efforts that tension relied on muddy guitar riffs or Lester’s alchemic keyboard effects, this is an album driven by instrumentation and tightly crafted movements. Excesses of distortion have been peeled away to reveal the musical proficiency beneath, so that the finger-picked intro to “It Doesn’t Matter Why,” the sensuous chord bends of “Simpatico,” and the poppy electronics on “Don’t Know Yet” receive their full technical due. And the timely flourishes of orchestral support across the album add interesting melodrama to the streamlined arrangements. What results is a sultry, if not still-too-hesitant, intimacy that allows songs to shimmer with moments of nuance and sophistication.
In keeping with this shift toward musical accessibility, Aubert’s lyrics have acquired a greater transparency. His customary blend of cerebral metaphors and visual imagery still prevails, but his language has become more plainly self-referential, lending unmitigated tenderness to the songs. And without having to compete any longer with the drone of sheer loudness, he’s able to showcase a range of peaks and valleys that ventures boldly outside of his typical monotone.
But for all of Aubert’s newfound reach, the punch of his vocal thrusts throughout Widow’s Weeds wouldn’t be possible without the harmonic parries of bassist Nikki Monninger. Her contributions on albums past have supplied softness and moderation to some of the group’s brawnier impulses (“Gun-Shy Sunshine,” “Ragamuffin”), and while it seems she’ll always be stuck at second mic, she’s no longer merely echoing Aubert’s lead. Her husky alto provides flawless melodic counterpoint on the ethereal “Freakazoid” and the restless “Songbirds,” and she offsets Aubert’s gravelly baritone on “Widow’s Weeds” with delicate grace.
The album also conjures the ghosts of exemplars past, sampling a whisper of Placebo’s “Pure Morning,” a hint of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android,” and a whiff of the guitar crunches from Alice in Chains’s “Man in the Box.” Especially on “Straw Man” and “Simpatico,” the sleek, cleaned-up sound does little to hide the band’s influences. But if the going recommendation is to steal like an artist, then Silversun Pickups have appropriated their indulgences happily and in good faith. “Songbirds” bursts out of the speakers like a post-pubertal “Panic Switch,” still bristling with angsty vigor but far more composed and sure of itself. In contrast, “Bag of Bones,” a meandering blunder, just shuffles along aimlessly and repetitiously.
Elsewhere, “Simpatico” spotlights the band’s calmer, quieter tendencies while offering some of the album’s most intricate guitar work. And the hardest-hitting yet most nostalgic track, “We Are Chameleons,” lives up to its title by mopping up virtually every color and texture of Carnavas and wringing it out into a frenzied sonic meltdown that defies the restraint and self-control that led up to it. Widow’s Weeds may lack the arena-sized atmospherics and anthemic party songs of past Silversun Pickups efforts, but with each additional listen the hooks sink in deeper and the melodies stay longer in your head. It’s catchy, heartfelt, and far less forgettable than…what were those previous two albums named again?
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