Chris DeLine

“In the brutally cold world of Big Rock Biz, there’s something very comforting about just knowing that a band like L.A.’s Silversun Pickups exist.” Something tells me that the band’s press release has an air of arrogance stemming from varied facets, the main being that it is the truth. Simply said, there is something oddly comforting about the band’s album Carnavas. It is soothing to an ear molded by 90s alternia and shaped by post-grunge glorification. For a sound based on a secondary influence, repetitious hooks and fuzzed over vocals the album comes off as ambitious and unique amongst its contemporaries and certainly the highlight of the band’s career thus far.

While many initial mainstream comparisons toss about usual namedropping, there’s something deeper than such raw commercial parallels to like-sounding predecessors as Smashing Pumpkins, there’s a declaration of what has both introduced the band to its current state and what may come. “Now here we are revisiting a time a place, a whole industry, well we promise we’ll be leaving soon, we share apocalyptic views how comforting that we feel it too, who are we to promise we’ll be leaving shortly;” “Well Thought Out Twinkles” rings true with a bit of distinction when based inside of the sound’s context. The songs and band may be viewed as simple revisitations, but undoubtedly their time will pass and even the glory behind shoegazing will once be forgotten.

What’s special about the album can be found in its unexposed areas, hiding and startling as unexpected delights when the moments strike. There are a number of times when lyrical statements translate into pieces of universal thought within Carnavas, finding a unique context for any given listener. One such piece drops as the first line in the remarkable “Lazy Eye,” “I’ve been waiting, I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life, but it’s not quite right.” Something is gripping with this inch of universality, it cries for an all-encompassing agreement, no matter what the moment be, this reflects everyones thoughts. It could be such instances that offer inspiration to the aforementioned quote about the band, there is something there that genuinely makes the listener feel like the music was made for them.

When an album is first conceived its success can come in many ways. It can come through self-satisfaction, critical acclaim or even a simple letter mentioning how the words or chords you played meant something to someone else’s life. Through moments of layered, progressive drones of “Rusted Wheel” or even the Corganesque (see: commercial parallel) riffs Carnavas growls as a crossbreed of insecurity and egotism. The members of Silversun Pickups know exactly what they’ve done with the creation of the album and should be commended. It could be the calculation of factors which were introduced to inspire thoughts of reminisce and its universality was probably not overlooked. But when taking into consideration the summation of said efforts, the album makes sense and does so with tremendous power and honesty and it makes me feel like it was made for me, and that is special. Silversun Pickups have created a success.

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]