Silversun Pickups -
Silversun Pickups have released an EP that’s derivative, indulgent and moreish. ‘Pikul’ is the band’s first release since their debut got mixed reviews which all thought the album was a loose adaptation of Smashing Pumpkins back catalogue and weren’t sure whether this was a bad thing.
The EP is seven tracks of grungey guitars and breathy vocals. ‘Kissing Families’ is sliding riffs and screamed choruses. ‘Comeback Kid’ is similar but with more chords changes that makes it easier to dance or, more likely, mosh to. ‘Booksmart Devil’ is too slow to work nearly as well as the guitar distortion cries out for some energy to help it out. ‘The Fuzz’ is worse. Slower still, it’s unlistenable with a pretentiousness that reminds me most of the New York band they’re usually ripping off. The biggest exception to the trend is the sweetly delicate ‘Creation Lake’. It’s gorgeous. All the notes are crisp and echo like the woman singing.
For all their problems, the hoarser songs are strangely moreish at first and are good to have on in the background and on repeat or would be if tracks seven to twenty-two • sixteen tracks • weren’t just forty-four seconds of silence each which you have to stop what you’re doing to press the skip button to get to the song hidden behind them. The hidden track has always been banal self-indulgence and this is sixteen times as bad.
It’s also an emblem of Silversun Pickups’s biggest bum note • they’re perilously unfocused. I can’t see them ever releasing a song shorter than three and a half minutes that doesn’t sprawl like a cityscape. There’s no problem with being derivative, even when deriving from Smashing Pumpkins, but it’s a symptom of not knowing what you’re about. And the result? Long songs, varying quality and, argh, hidden tracks.