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ON THE COUCH WITH: Silversun Pickups

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: Hey Chris, how’s it going?
Chris Guanlao: Good, good.
Access All Areas.net.au: Congratulations on the new album!
Chris: Thank you. Thank you…
Access All Areas.net.au: How was the South by Southwest festival?
Chris: Yeah yeah it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun. It was easier than the last time we were there three years ago and we played six shows in three days. This time around we didn’t do that. We played few shows but we did a lot of press and met a lot of cool people. And it was good, it was good. It was kind of nice to get reintroduced to the music industry. We’ve been gone for a little while.
Access All Areas.net.au: Swoon is hitting stores soon. Are you more nervous or more excited about the launch?
Chris: Excited. Yeah, I’m excited. I think there’s always a little nervousness (laugh) in what we do. We’re anticipating it. We’re still kinda learning how to play the new songs well. There’s where the nerves come in. It’ll be fun. We love playing live so much that you know, it’s more anticipation than anything else.
Access All Areas.net.au: You guys have mentioned that Swoon sounds like a “nervous breakdown”. How did you guys decide on the theme of the album?
Chris: I think it was really funny because the very first day when we went into the practice space to start writing this song, we had this giant eraser board that we purchased so we can write – very office like of us (laugh)…Anyway, we have this nice clean white board. First day, Brian just comes in and he writes on the very top of it, he writes “swoon” and then a “question mark”. And he was like, “I don’t know, I was just thinking bout this word and was thinking maybe it might be a good title, a good theme to what we’re doing. And that kinda from there, it was like an almost perfect thing you know, like the definition [of the word, Swoon] is a lack of oxygen, like fainting from a lack of oxygen…It’s kinda like a little bit of what we’re going through. We just came back from a two-year run of playing shows for Carnavas, you know - out on the road for two years and we came back and we’re kinda like, we’re back home and we didn’t really belong – we felt like we didn’t belong ‘cause we’ve been gone for so long. We’ve changed a little bit and so we just went in and start writing. We weren’t sure we could do it ‘cause we’ve never done it before but we just kept on doing it and I think it shows in the record that there’s a lot of ups and downs, definitely how it was in the writing process where we had high moments, and then we had low moments. And then we had high moments again and it just felt right. By the end of the six months of writing, that question mark was erased. It was like just ‘Swoon’ at that point.
Access All Areas.net.au: So is it easier this time to just sit back and enjoy what you’ve achieved, now that the album is done and all the frustration is over?
Chris: Definitely. I’m so proud of the final product. We all are. We’re just proud of what we done and what we went through and came out positive! We’re not depressed (laugh). We’re not melancholy. We’re just happy just playing our depressing music (laugh).
Access All Areas.net.au: What is your favourite song off the album? Why?
Chris: Probably, ‘The Royal We’. We think just cause when we first started working on that song, it was the first week of writing and we just came in and it was just really fast. It was quick. Everybody understood exactly what we’re supposed to be for this song. We felt like us, but new and improved if you will (laugh). We just kinda knew – we felt like we were stepping it up a little bit, and that was kinda exciting. I remember that was an exciting feeling to have. We were like, wait a minute! We can actually, maybe do this and you know, we made it all possible as opposed to wondering, “well I dunno…”
Access All Areas.net.au: It’s funny that you say that ‘cause when I listened to the album, ‘The Royal We’ stood out to me.
Chris: Yeah, It’s just one of those things. That one it feels like – it’s us, you know. I feel like that’s something what we would write. I think the whole record is funny. Sometimes I describe Swoon as kind of like our “Sequel”, in the sense that we started right off of that. I felt like there was no expedition that we needed to do. People that were gonna listen to it already knew us, and we could sort of just start off from that. We start off with these songs that are pretty rocky, and being really in-your-face with ‘There’s No Secret this Year’ and “The Royal We” and with interlude in between, the Swoon interlude. And I don’t think we could do that if it was our first record. I think it’s just…we start off strong and big. We pulled the reigns back and started getting a lot moodier as the record goes along but I don’t know if we could’ve got in our way if that was our first record.
Access All Areas.net.au: Which song was do you think was harder or more frustrating to write and record?
Chris: I think everything else (laugh). I think something like ‘Surrounded’, the last track – that was one of those songs you didn’t know...It’s actually a weird tempo for us…a weird kinda speed, a weird style that we’re not really used to. I remember it was like one of the later songs. It’s one of the songs where the last two weeks of the writing process when we already had it a scheduled time to go into the studio. When Brian was like, ok we’re not gonna work on any more new songs. Then like the last week, Brian was like I can’t, I got this idea. We’re like nooooo, you’re gonna kill me. It’s just one of those songs where you just like, “I don’t know where this is going” but I’m liking it. I’m liking that I don’t know where it’s going. And we didn’t even know if that was gonna make the record. Surprisingly, considering we had like – I think we wrote twenty songs by the end of those six months…maybe one of the top 15 but definitely not the top 10 at the time. So for it to make the record, we’re just happy…
I think ‘Surrounded’ is just one of the songs where I don’t think it can go anywhere else but that last song. It’s just one of those things where it’s like, “I don’t think it can make the record” and then when we decided to put it as the last track we thought, “well that’s perfect”…especially after ‘Catch and Release’. Pretty much everything else is kind of difficult (laugh).
Access All Areas.net.au: The track, ‘It’s Nice To Know You Work Alone’ has a very interesting title. Can you tell us more about this song?
Chris: I think that song comes out of just kind of where we were at that time. It’s funny how the songs come out. It feels like it’s almost we wrote them in order of how it is - it’s not true entirely but the first three songs [‘There’s No Secret This Year’, ‘The Royal We’ and ‘Growing Old is Getting Old’] specifically were written in order, which is very strange for us, for any band to already know what your first three songs are gonna be. And coming out of that it’s just us by ourselves, you know…it’s a weird song…again it’s something that we’re not necessarily used to doing and the fact that to go and back forth with the vocals, it’s kind of disorientating. It’s funny because Brian and Nikki have such similar voices – their registers are very similar. You don’t really notice right away that it’s going back and forth...I think that’s kind of one of the cool things about us is that, it kind of makes it a little uncomfortable – you’re not really sure where it’s coming from. I think that’s where that song comes from. We’re trying to make it uncomfortable.
Access All Areas.net.au: How do you see yourselves in 10 years?
Chris: Hopefully we’re still playing music (laugh), still putting out records. That’s what we all wanna be doing. We’re really fortunate right now for the fact that we can go some place like Australia. We never thought that would actually happen. Maybe we might of hoped one day but it would be such a dream at one point in our lives to do that so, the fact that we can do that now and we might be going there soon. I’m just really fortunate to be where we are right now you know, hopefully in 10 years we’ll be doing the same. Maybe you know, maybe making better records hopefully.
Access All Areas.net.au: Lastly, what would you like to shout out to your fans?
Chris: Just, Thank you and hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Access All Areas.net.au: Good Luck with the album. And we hope to see you soon!
Chris: Hopefully we’ll be there!

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Swoon. Verb. “To pass out from weakness, physical or emotional distress due to a loss of blood supply to the brain.” Or, album title. Silversun Pickups’ sophomore LP,
Swoon, will be released April 17 on Dangerbird Records/Warner Music Australia.

The L.A. quartet has emerged from the depths of recording studios and is ready to flaunt their new material, including a performance at Coachella Friday, April 17.
“I’m really proud of Swoon,” singer/guitarist Brian Aubert says. “I felt that we started this thing with a complete blank slate just kind of staring at a big mountain, not knowing where this was going to go. Everyone worked so insanely hard and I feel like you hear that we were in there every day trying to make the best songs that we could.”

A pair of these new songs will be unveiled just prior to the album’s release as part of an exclusive Silversun Pickups Track Pack for the top-selling video game Guitar Hero® World Tour. In April, players will be able to take the SSPU challenge with three downloadable tracks: two new songs, “Panic Switch” and “Nice to Know You Work Alone,” or “Well Thought Out Twinkles” from their breakthrough, Carnavas.

With only a short month off following an exhaustive two-plus year tour schedule behind their debut, SSPU locked themselves in a rehearsal room to begin work on their follow up. Aubert points out this scheduled seclusion was a different approach for the band:

“During Carnavas we were in and out of the studio often because we were touring behind our EP Pikul. We had to stop and start and stop and start, which was a little
frustrating and crazy. This is the first time we’ve ever actually written anything straight through, then gone into a studio.”

With the help of the Carnavas producer and mixer team of Dave Cooley and Tony Hoffer, Silversun Pickups churned out an album that Aubert says, “sounds like a nervous
breakdown.” The songs are taut, embellished in places with string arrangements that appear like a drizzle of mercury over the SSPU's trademark distorted density. The band's
music acts as a shadow to Aubert’s lyrics being pulled on a chain by his every vocal whim. His words narrate personal traumas, as though they could be commentary on
headlines of any day’s newspaper. As a whole, Swoon is a tapestry of beauty and aggression.

www.silversunpickups.com

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