Silversun Pickups

One of Los Angeles' most treasured new bands, the Silversun Pickupsare soon to become a national favorite with the release of theirfull-length debut, Carnavas. The album delivers on the promise of the alt-rock quartet's earlier EP, Pikul,and its large, fuzzy sound is sure to please fans of the group'sstellar live shows. Ticketmaster recently spoke with frontman BrianAubert about the new album and the band's current tour in support ofthe release.

Ticketmaster: You're in the middle of a U.S. tour right now. Have there been any highlights so far?
Brian Aubert:Every time I think the highlight has happened, the next sh...

One of Los Angeles' most treasured new bands, the Silversun Pickupsare soon to become a national favorite with the release of theirfull-length debut, Carnavas. The album delivers on the promise of the alt-rock quartet's earlier EP, Pikul,and its large, fuzzy sound is sure to please fans of the group'sstellar live shows. Ticketmaster recently spoke with frontman BrianAubert about the new album and the band's current tour in support ofthe release.

Ticketmaster: You're in the middle of a U.S. tour right now. Have there been any highlights so far?
Brian Aubert:Every time I think the highlight has happened, the next show provesthat it didn't. There's just constantly being highlights. We're juststunned. The most stunning thing is we've holed ourselves up in makingthis record, even though we were turning on the EP a bunch but mostlyon the West Coast, and to have worked as hard as we have on the record,and then to do this and immediately come out and start playing theseplaces that we have hardly played or we never have played...Like inMinneapolis. Let's use that as an example. I've never been therebefore. And to play the show that we played with the crowd the way theywere and the response, it's just crazy. People are coming up to us andgoing, "Oh, my God. You sold out D.C., New York, Chicago andMinneapolis." And that's cool, but, man, it's not the selling out part.It's that people are going crazy, like singing songs and just stufflike that. It's just constantly a surprise. Minneapolis, let's say, hasbeen a highlight. And we're super excited we sold out the Troubadour(club in Los Angeles). The one sell out thing we're excited about isthe Troubadour. We're amazed...It's one of my favorite venues in L.A.

TM: Have you noticed any differences between L.A. audiences and other audiences across the States?
BA:There are little differences. Obviously, you get into the big citiesand the people are a little bit more calm. But not too much. If youplay smaller towns, people go extra crazy. But so far our shows havebeen pretty much amazing. L.A. and New York always get credited withthese reay bad crowds, and I understand and I see it. They've seenthings and there are industry people who really don't care. But I thinkwe've been lucky in L.A. because we've been playing there for so longthat people that come to see it really like it. So we never really havebad crowds.  

TM: What's your musical background? When did you first become interested in music?
BA:I've always really been into it. I've always liked music. I startedplaying guitar when I was seven just for fun. It's just something I'vealways sort of liked. And I think it skips a generation. My father isreal scientific and a total mathematician. And his dad was a totalmusician guy...So my kid will be a football player. (laughs)

TM: But your grandchildren... 
BA: But my grandchildren are gonna rock! (laughs)

TM: How did you get together with the other members of the band?
BA:I met Nikki on a plane when I moved to England. She was stealingalcohol bottles out of the stewardess's thing and I thought that wasreally cool. We became friends...Then I started to want to do my ownmusic after being in a friend's band for a while. Nikki was one of myroommates and she wanted to learn how to play bass, so she came downand started plunking on the bass. And our other roommate came down withsome drums, and we were just kind of messing around in the studio. Andthen they sent a tape to CMJ (a music festival in New York) becausethey thought it would be fun to see what would happen. A boombox in themiddle of the room and there weren't even any songs or anything. And wegot into the festival.

TM: Wow. That's cool.
BA:Yeah, tell me about it. I don't even know if we could (get into thefestival) now, but we did then. And that's how if first started. Thenonce we played in New York we didn't really have any songs and I wouldnever sing or anything. And this guy Mitchell Frank who runs Spacelandsaw us in New York walking down the street and he said, "Hey, why don'tyou guys play L.A. when you come back?"  So we started playingSpaceland and all these places and we've been playing ever since prettymuch. And everything has just sort of evolved from that time.Everything evolved while playing. Nothing really happened in thepractice space beforehand. Everything was always happening at shows.And that's sort of how it happened for us.

TM: How would you describe the music scene in Los Angeles? Is it supportive? Competitive?
BA:I'm sure it's both, you know...when we leave L.A., people try topinpoint it all the time, like what it is. And they're always right andthey're always wrong. It's just a huge, huge city which is what I thinkmakes it unique. It's still like a complete metropolis. It just doesn'tlook like one. There are so many people there. So besides the billionpeople trying to get into the entertainment industry, there are also abillion plumbers and people born and raised there. With the people thatwe sort of stick with on our side of it all, we don't really see toomuch of that competitiveness and all that kind of funk. We see thatsometimes, but the people that we are friends with and that we playshows with, everyone's in it the same way. Everyone's real supportive.I'd almost say it's super supportive.

TM: Let's talk about the new album Carnavas. How does it compare with your EP Pikul?
BA:Well, the EP was basically a collection of stuff that we self-released,including a song or two that we recorded specifically for the EP. Itwas just going to be a holdover for us to make the record. We basicallyjust documented what we were doing. We didn't have much time in thestudio. We had like two days to make a bunch of songs. So we just go inthere and play like we play live and record it and there it was, youknow. And the EP kind of grew legs, which was crazy. We thought in L.A.for sure people would be into it, but outside of L.A. is what wetripped out on. Because of certain radio stations like KEXP in Seattleand WOXY in Cincinnati and a bunch of online stuff, it grew some legs.And that made us go out and tour for the EP more, and the EP reallystarted to exist further than we thought. And it was great because thatgave us time while we were touring to really think about the record.The EP had a certain aesthetic in the way it sounded, and we wanted therecord to be a whole different thing. Not in the way where we're all ofa sudden a ska band. But we just wanted the record to have a differentsound. The EP was very warm and kind of acoustic-y a little, and wewanted the record to sound kind of metallic and shiny. It was the firsttime we actually got to go into the studio for a while and just focuson making a record. So we got real meticulous with sounds. We gotproducer Dave Cooley and this engineer Tom Biller who works with JonBrion all the time, so that guy's a genius. And we just got really intothe technical aspects of it and instead of just going in there anddocumenting what we were doing, we thought about songs and sounds andshapes and how it all went together and made one sort of full thing.And the irony kind of being that it sounds more like us live than ourEP does. With the EP we played live and recorded it and it sounds warm.But the record is really thought out with a lot of work behind it...andall that work made it sound more like we do live than the EP. We werekind of hitting a ceiling before, because live we like it really,really loud and really crazy. We like it to be very big sounding. Andthe record, with all its work, I think we achieved that.

TM: Do you prefer recording new material in the studio or playing for audiences live?
BA:Playing for audiences, straight on. That's just what it's all aboutreally. We know people that just love to record and don't really liketo play live, and I think that's just crazy. Recording is fun in adifferent way. It's a lot of work and you kind of lose your mind. Butlive is just really gratifying. It's really fun. That's how we started.We were a live band for a while in L.A. That's what we like to do, andwe weren't even thinking about other things. And I think that's how theband will always be.

TM: How do you approach your live shows?
BA:We really approach them the way we always have. Playing things exactlylike they sound on the album or the EP, that sounds okay, but they justdon't quite punch in like we'd like it to. So we kind of get it to be alittle more reckless and play things a little bit quicker. A little bitmore energy and stuff like that. That's how we do it. It's fun in L.A.too...again, we didn't move there to start something. We were justthere and L.A. happened to be our backyard and there are all thesegreat clubs. It was fun because people sort of knew who we were and wewere able to do things...In certain towns that had never seen usbefore, especially before our record came out and when people didn'tknow our material, we would just kind of focus on the louder songs.Just get in there and make a big noise. What's cool about Los Angelesfor us—just cool about anybody's hometown—is that we can do thatsometimes but we can also play shows at Tangier or something where weplay acoustic and make things really strange and play all of theseother songs that we wouldn't necessarily play in front of newaudiences...It's fun.

TM: Can you take us through the typical songwriting process for the band?
BA:Here's basically how it goes. It's almost always this way, butsometimes it may change. I start out with a song pretty much. And Icome in with a blueprinted way that it can change and all this otherstuff with melodies. So I've kind of written the song, but I didn'treally. I just bring it in like that, instead of bringing in an ideaand you just jam it out ‘cause we don't really like to jam. (Jamming)is kind of boring and stupid things happen for us. I come in with ablueprint with things like that and the other guys, the three of them,attack it and tell me why I suck and how to make it better. Then theytake it and form it and the whole thing kind of comes together. So iteither changes completely or stays the same. But everybody adds theirstuff on it and gives input. And that's pretty much exactly how itgoes. I'll start the ball rolling, but they make the ball big.

TM: Some fans have praised you for bringing back a ‘90s alternative rock sound. How would you respond to that?
BA: It was not a mission statement or anything like that. I think more with Carnavas we've gotten that response and I can see it too, especially since Carnavasis our rock record. We didn't get that very much with the EP but wedefinitely get that with this. I think it's cool. I mean, people haveto compare it to something. That seems the way it always goes and we'veactually learned a lot about bands from who people have said we'reinfluenced by. We're like, "Oh, we've never heard of those guys, butwe'll listen to them." Obviously, we knew who My Bloody Valentine wereand we knew who the Smashing Pumpkins were...We knew who those guyswere, but it wasn't necessarily stuff we were listening to. That's justkind of how it sounds. We like the big warm guitar sounds and stufflike that. So I think it's cool. And the bands that people compare usto seem to be really good bands. And we're kind of like, "Wow, really?You think we're like them? Wow. Thanks!" People always go, "Are youoffended?"  But it's like, "Why? No, it's great." But it was never ourthing to bring some sort of thing back, and we've been playing the waywe've been playing for a long time in Los Angeles, and that neverreally came up until lately now that we're a little bit out there andthe record sort of sounds like that. But I can see it and I think it'scool. I just did an interview and the guy was like, "Did you make ityour statement to bring back the shoegaze movement?" And I was like,"What? No, but if you want, yeah, sure." We're pioneering the ways ofthe past (laughs)...People usually come up to you and say you soundlike this, and they're kind of pulling from their pool of what theylike. Unless they hate you and they don't talk about you at all. 

TM: So who are some of your musical influences?  
BA:We listen to all kinds of music. Usually, it's like Neu! and Can andNeil Young. Lately it's been Tom Petty like mad...We were hugely activein going out to see bands all the time in eastern Los Angeles, like inSilverlake and Echo Park and all those places. There are just so manyclubs and so many different kinds of bands happening all the time. Wewere constantly out. If we weren't playing, we were out watching bandsand seeing new bands. I would say we were almost influenced by a lot ofthe bands from Los Angeles, like The Movies, 400 Blows or Autolux. TheSecret Machines, before they signed with Warner Bros., they used tostay with us all the time and we'd see them play and go, "Man, look atthat!" Friends' bands pretty much. Sea Wolf is just killing it rightnow. Bands like that. They kind of influenced us and not necessarily ina sonic way...In Los Angeles, we're just so proud of how much greatmusic is happening. There's just so much going on.