posted 10/16/2006 (Mon) @ 01:15 pm
>>> Music Reviews
Silversun Pickups - Carnavas (2006)
You’ll be picking it up over and over and over and over and over and…
- Melatonin
- Well Thought Out Twinkles
- Checkered Floor
- Little Lover’s So Polite
- Future Foe Scenarios
- Waste It On
- Lazy Eye
- Rusted Wheel
- Dream at Tempo 119
- Three Seed
- Common Reactor
Silversun Pickups get a lot of Corganishishness thrown their way for the sake of vocal inflection, but on their new record “Carnavas,” they’ve pinned down that elusive “love in neutral” tone that only bands like My Bloody Valentine have managed in the past, and spitshined it with a melodic Guided by Voices sheen, yielding white noise-pop that sparkles from the glint of all the fuzzy edges.
Something like “Well Thought Out Twinkles” could only be called soda pop, recalling everything from the La’s to “Adore”-era Pumpkins (with human drum machine Chris Guanlao filling in for the less-earthy computer), caffeinated and shaken up in a mixer until it resembles gender neutral shoegaze. Perfect sunshine pop lies buried under a truncheon of fuzz–you can hear it if you listen–but it’s been beaten and whipped like a birthday cake into something excited but not sure of what emotion it’s feeling.
Their influences are as varied and distinct as a fruit smoothie: “Dream at Tempo 119″ sounds like the best-produced early Robert Pollard track you’ve never heard sung an octave higher, and stuff like “Rusted Wheel” broods with the best of them before sprouting wings to fly off the axle into territory occupied by like-minded contemporaries Lovedrug and Amusement Parks on Fire.
“Carnavas” is like the best of the past wrapped up as a gift to the future. If reviving seductively aggressive ’90s noise is next in line behind rainy day ’80s new wave in the future of pop music, take comfort in knowing that once you pick the Silversuns up, you’re only going to want to listen to them over and over and over and…
