Free Play Silversun Pickups
"Well Thought Out Twinkles"

Brian : How you doing, man? MP3: I'm doing great, how are you this morning? Yeah, just had a long sleep finally. Just woke up and went like, whoa, we slept for like 10 hours. Congratulations. Where are you? San Francisco. Oh. Let's talk a little about your history, because for me and many of our readers--well, for many people out there--you're pretty new on the radar. Yeah. We're unknown. Or unknown, yes. Sort of a, yeah, unidentified blip on the screen, but... That's right. Moving in very closely, though. So how did this all sort of get started? We've been all friends for quite a long time, and I've known, I knew Nikki, I met her on a plane going to England...

We were in a band, and she was in band, and we lived together, we were roommates. And we had all these friends around us, like in Los Angeles we were all playing in bands and whatnot. And I hated the band I was in and she used to push me in the face and tell me to quit. So I did, and I started [this thing] in the practice space of my former band, and she had just decided, "Hey, I want to learn how to play bass."

So I said, "Come on down." She started plucking away the strings and then my girlfriend at the time, she said, "What are you guys doing down there?" And I'm like, "We're just messing around," and she's like, "I want to play drums." So we pulled her in there and, I'm like, "Right here, if I hit you here, if I hit--not hit her, yeah, abuse my girlfriend!"

I was like, "Well, you can be one of those monkeys that you snap, you know, like they play the cymbals when you hit them on the head, and they change beat?" Oh yeah. OK, so that's what we'd do. She just started kind of hitting things. And then Nikki made a tape and sent it to CMJ Music Festival, she thought it would be kind of fun. And I was like, "Oh, you crazy people, there's no way." And we made up a band name, which became Silversun Pickups, and we had a bio about our cat, just silly stuff. And there was like a boom-box tape in the middle of the room, featuring three unlistenable songs.

And then the joke was on us, because we got into CMJ and we were like, "Oh God, like, what do we do now?"

So we said, "All right, well let's just try and scratch something together and teach our drummer two more beats or something!" Then we flew to New York and played.

Yeah, and then from that moment on, because we actually were going to see bands, and had friends in bands in Los Angles and Silver Lake and we were at certain clubs a lot. And, on the streets of New York, after our CMJ show, if you can call it that, we ran into a promoter who runs a club called Spaceland in Los Angeles. And he's like, he saw us walking down the street and said, "What are you guys doing here?" And we're like, "Well we played a show here at CMJ." And he's like, "Well when you come back to LA, which is in a couple of days, I have [an opening] so you guys can play there." And we went, "OK."

And so from that moment on 'til like two days ago, we've just been constantly playing, except obviously there was huge lineup changes, and different thoughts on how this was going. That's sort of the impetus of it, that's how it started. You mentioned... Somehow we got into a festival with a crappy tape. And I'm sure with the obscene number of bands that actually played CMJ, it was a bit--was it a little bit daunting at first? Well, not for us, because we just didn't care, we were just like, I mean, we weren't there for any kind of, you know, like, "Hey, this is our break." We were just like, "Dang, we get to go to New York and see bands. And so we'll just have to go play this thing for like, half an hour, and then we're free!" You know what I mean? Because we were just not even thinking about, at that point, the idea that we were a band. I mean, we really weren't one.

And then we--the funny thing about it is we just kept playing. And we love playing live, we just didn't really have stuff to play and I literally have to kick the drum, the drum head to have our drummer change beats, things like that. It was pretty wild. But, it was funny, because we just kept playing, kept playing, kept getting offered these things, and we basically kind of started to form as a band on stage, instead of like in a practice space. It was pretty strange, like kind of trial by fire, and pretty scary...but also really fun.

While most people work on things in the practice space or whatever, we were always playing. So we would work on things at a show. If we had some sort of ideas, and then--once [we made] those changes, once we got our drummer, Christopher, who we know, we knew for a while, and then our friend Joe on keys, and things like that, like, that's when, at that point things were really showing their colors. Was it difficult for you to take a sound that had been established primarily on stage into the studio for your latest album? When we recorded before, it was always kind of like in a documentary sort of way. Like you go in there and just document what you do really quickly, put a mic in front of your amp, keep your settings the way it is and there you go... Basically play like you play live and, and then here's how it sounds on a record.

And we're always a little bit disappointed, because it was kind of like live, you know, a little more organic, but just didn't sound like, didn't have the weight and the power, and that weight and power sounded so lame.

No, it just didn't have it, we--as it did, we felt like it did live. And so on this record, we also had the EP out, which we're really, really proud of, and that's sort of a like pidge-podge of previous recordings that we had. And knowing that we were going to finally make like a record, we wanted to really use the studio for the first time, because we never have. We'd never been able to actually hang out in the studio longer than a couple of days.

And then with this guy Dave Cooley, who produced us and our friend Tom Biller, who engineered, like they're just so technical, they're just such technical...nerds, nerds is the best word. Nerds! And they are so good at what they do and we were able to really experiment with things. It's like, definitely not the most organic-sounding thing, but it sounds more like the way we play live than our previous recordings, which was live. Does that make sense? Oh yes. Which is totally baffling to me. I mean, it's a totally new experience and I used to kind of giggle when I hear bands, how hard they work on records, and I'm like, how hard can a record be?. And now I know it's hard. We broke our faces on this record, like, I never worked so hard on anything in my life, it was so insane, like just the amount of concentration, and constant writing and doing all this stuff. So many different tones, and putting them all back-to-back, it was insane.

And also touring on [an] EP, which we thought we were just going to put this little EP out and then not really do much with it and wait for the record, but the EP ended up growing legs, 'cause it's on radio and a bunch of online stations. But we were just like, "Oh wow."

So we had to go tour it. We went out and played shows a lot for it and did, like, all these tours--especially the West Coast, we ended up going up and down there a million times. So what do you think--I mean, obviously, as you said, it grew legs and the band seems to be growing legs in general, and what would you personally sort of attribute that to? How, us growing legs? Yeah, I mean, the band itself. I mean obviously, as you said before, it's not as though you've gone on some gross number of domestic tours, or built up this gigantic fan base. Yet your music seems to be really resonating with a lot of people. I don't know, I mean, I would like to know. It would be actually, really amazing to kind of know, you know what I mean? Sort of like in the same respect, like I'd love to know what we actually sound like live. Right. We never get to be in the audience. Even if you get to hear a recording it's a very subjective experience. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know, I mean I guess we're lucky. There's always been something like even from the beginning when we started to play...

We used to get kind of like, accidentally pigeonholed in Los Angeles as being the band that was totally anticommercialism. And there was no--we never had any mission statement about that. The reason why that kind of came about is the fact that we were playing and we were playing for a while, and we would play with the bands that were, that just started.

And then you look over at the merch table and you'll see that band has Web sites, T-shirts, publicity, like people working behind them, blah, blah, blah. And we'd been playing a lot longer than them and we had nothing.

In fact we didn't even have recordings, we had people bootlegging things. We just weren't thinking enough, so we were just so amazed that we were able to perform... People were coming to see us and we were able to play, and we weren't thinking about that hurdle just yet, you know. We weren't in any kind of rush and we were still enjoying that, what we accomplished at that moment.

And for some reason we became kind of special to them, like their kind of band, their little special band, you know? Right. I don't know why people get so attached to us. We're sold out now, a whole marketing machine now. Well how does that feel now? I mean, well, you said you had no sort of anticorporate manifesto. No. But was it your intention to reach these sorts of heights? You know, it's funny, everything was a hurdle, just playing live was a kind of hurdle. We used to have dreams of playing with our friends' bands, like, "Oh, Monday we'll be able to play with [Pine Martin] and [Ottawa] at the Silver Lake Lounge." And we would do it and just go nuts, you know. Things like that. But, what was your question again, then? The coffee's not working. Oh, Lord, I don't know. Yeah, that's awesome. That's the greatest ever. Oh, it was something about a band. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, the marketing and the commercial. Well screw that. What do you think-- Yeah right dude, screw it. Doesn't really matter, you know? Yeah, no. I mean it sounds to me as though you sort of incubated in your own music as opposed to giving a fuck about what outside forces were telling you or-- You just can't give a fuck about what outside sources are telling you, 'cause if you do, you're screwed. Like, what sources are you going to listen to...to make you think you have some sort of equation in how this whole thing works, and you've got one up on anybody, you're a fool. But, you play in a city where people truly do think that they have it under control. Oh yeah, I mean that's almost the beauty of a city like that. And it's in fact because the culture on that side of that city. Or, I mean LA is huge, and it gets labelled, like that's all it is, and that is it, but it's just too big to kind of label it like that, you know? Right. Like, that culture exists there, and that makes the counterculture even tighter... Being in LA and being not "LA" makes your walls bigger. So, I just have sort of one last question for you and I'll let you go. OK. I have to ask about some of the comparisons that are coming up about your music. Oh, totally. And I'm curious if you chose to infuse some of the sounds that are being heard in your music? I hear, well as you know, the early part of this decade seems to have been dedicated to reviving angular post-punk, if you would like to call it that. And, it seems like the latter half is either moving toward straight-out stoner rock or--now what I'm hearing is a lot of shoegazer or a return to wall of sound, like in the early nineties. Right. And, you definitely conjure up some of those evil spirits from that time period. Was that a conscious effort? We--it's funny, because only recently--I wasn't aware that there was a shoegaze revival happening, and then I learned about it by doing interviews... I learned a lot about music, because I feel like I've been so removed--like the more we've doing stuff the less music I listen to, because I just go in my room and be quiet, you know? But I'm learning about what's happening now and if that's true then that's great. And that either means we're in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, I would say the right place, because there's definitely a creative spark and substance in what you're doing. We're schizophrenic, you know, like we really like so much stuff, but we're also big fans of the guitar, and guitar music. And, especially distortion and, distortion in a really pretty way, like instead of a gristly, tinny sort of sound. We like it when things can get really big...that's just the way we like it. And those are obviously things like My Bloody Valentine, who I think are pretty much masters at that, you know? Right. You can't do that without invoking them. We'll be stuck in between like things like Neu! and bands like Can. And then things like Neil Young, like lately we've been just tripping up over Tom Petty, we're like, "He's a genius, the guy's a genius." But if we listen to like Can and Tom Petty, well how come we don't sound like that? And we're like, "Well because we love these guys so much, why would we want to do it," you know. Right. We couldn't repeat this. They're there already, they're amazing. But, this is kind of how we sound, and right now where this is--we've always just been kind of crazy on the guitars. We used to be a little bit crazier, you know, like as far as songs would be really long, and it would just be a little bit more, like, kind of strange. Like, the effects would go on for too long, but, after a while, the next thing, you fight it, but the next thing you know, you're just like [at] that four-minute song you never wanted to write. But have you truly written that four-minute song that you never wanted to write? I haven't, actually. I haven't. I wanna, I'm ready for it. I'm ready to start going acoustic, I'm sick of hauling this gear around. Now you've got me thinking about Tom Petty singing, instead of Damo Suzuki, for Can. That would have made a very interesting rendition of Tago Mago. But that guy's a genius, man, that guy's written some songs. Which one? Tom Petty. Suzuki or Petty, yeah. Suzuki. Yeah. Yeah, you know, like those mashups that are so popular, that I can't stand. Well, let's get started. Yeah. We'll mix "Mushroom" with "Last Dance with Mary Jane." Yeah, let's do this. All right. Let's see what happens and see what the world does. Implode, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, that's it, sir. All right man, nice talking to you. Oh, wonderful talking to you, and good luck. Thank you very much.