Silversun Pickups – Swoon Review

Posted by Tom Santoro on 04.18.2009

The grunge movement lives on with the Silversun Pickups second full length album. Is it any good?

TRACK LISTING:

1. There’s No Secrets This Year
2. The Royal We
3. Growing Old is Getting Old
4. It’s Nice To Know You Work Alone
5. Panic Switch
6. Draining
7. Sort Of
8. Substitution
9. Catch and Release
10. Surrounded



“So we all/Are Getting Old/And it’s getting old” declares Silversun Pickups singer Brian Aubert on the aptly titled “Growing Up is Getting Old.” You said it brother. I feel old, now that more and more bands I grew up listening too are listed as major influences to newer bands. The Silversun Pickups drive that point home as they are the legitimate children of the Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth and the cousin of Coheed and Cambria. Listening to them brings me back to good old 90s when I was a teen going to Lollapalooza (when it was a yearly traveling festival).

The grunge movement lives on with the Silversun Pickups second full-length album Swoon. The obvious comparisons to the Pumpkins and Sonic Youth are justified. All three bands feature fuzzy guitar distortion, breathy vocals, loud sonic landscapes, tempo changes and a girl on bass. They take these characteristics of these bands and have perfected it, building off their debut Carnavas.

Swoon is not much different from Carnavas. The only difference may be that it lacks an accessible hit like “Lazy Eye”. Half of the new album is loud aggressive hard rock while the other is a little more composed. The songs are also quite lengthy and at times are hard to get into.

Of the harder edged tracks “Panic Switch”, “The Royal We” and “Sort of” are the standouts. “Panic Switch” is a high-energy paranoia themed song with driven sonic guitars and a bouncy bass line. The song does not let up for the entire duration. Similarly, “Sort Of” has driven guitars, but has a tempo change that gets louder when Aubert gets to the chorus.

“The Royal We” may be the best of the three. It is also a song full of paranoia with the chorus “Do you feel safe again? Look over your shoulder/Very carefully look over your shoulder.” It is also sonically pleasing and features a string section that gives it more of a dynamic than “Panic Switch” and “Sort of”.

I didn’t care for the other harder edge songs, “There’s No Secrets This Year” and “Surrounded”. “Surrounded” is muddy and Aubert’s vocals could be clearer. “There’s No Secrets This Year” is all over the place and I could not get into it.

Of the more mellow songs on the Swoon, the standouts are “Catch and Release”, “Substitution” and “Growing Up is Getting Old.” “Growing Up is Getting Old” is my favorite mostly because of the title. Its message is that everyone is getting older and not to fear death because that is all of our ultimate end.

“Pull out the fear of silence
And put out the need for guidance
And put out your own devices
And don't be afraid of the cold

And we sing, sing, sing.
Fight, we fight, fight.
We cry, cry, cry.
We slide, slide, we slide into the light.”

It starts slow and airy, like Aubert is talking to you from beyond, and then in the middle, the music picks up and he pulls you in.

“It’s Nice to Know You Work Alone” and “Draining” are tracks where the band maintains a slow tempo throughout and lack the emotion given to the other tracks. Because of their length, it is easy to ignore them.

The 411: Swoon is full of all the trademarks of grunge music like tempo changes, guitar distortion and dark themes. The songs are a bit long (the shortest one is 4:40) which sometimes caused me to tune out midstream. Overall, Swoon is a great record for fans of The Silversun Pickups and fans of grunge music.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]