Silversun Pickups
Tenterhooks
NEW MACHINE
Silversun Pickups could’ve been a one-hit wonder. Six years after forming in 2000, the dreamy LA indie-shoegazers finally released their debut, Carnavas, with the understated effort nesting inside of it one of the biggest alt-rock songs of the mid-2000s. “Lazy Eye” was so emotionally intense that it could’ve raised the bar too high for Silversun Pickups to pole-vault over with any subsequent releases. Luckily for them, and for us, that didn’t come to pass. Twenty years later, they’re still here, and it isn’t because they’ve used their singles as a crutch. Rather, it’s the cohesiveness of the band, their determination to avoid making the same record twice, and their focus on strong songwriting that have led them to continue to thrive. Those magic ingredients are also what have kept fans loyal to the project co-founded by vocalist/guitarist Brian Aubert and bassist/vocalist Nikki Monninger all these years later.
After evolving significantly from album to album over the past quarter-century, Silversun Pickups could almost be mistaken for another band on their seventh studio effort, Tenterhooks, in that they don’t seem to be gunning for another hit single. Debates as to which track on Tenterhooks is most ear-friendly couldn’t possibly be as contentious as those surrounding previous albums (“Well Thought Out Twinkles” was the standout on Carnavas, in my opinion). Such is the state of the music industry in 2026, when full-lengths have once again overtaken 7-inches on the race-car track. And if you’re a betting person, the odds are very strong with Tenterhooks, which is more so a strong body of work rather than a gumball machine for singles.
And just because it’s an album that can be thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish doesn’t mean its 10 songs are tied together by a story line or even a single theme. The tracks coagulated from a series of voice memos and riffs that Aubert had tucked away for future use. Mostly eschewing the gleeful, distortion-doused approach that the band took with their early, irresistibly melodic material—think of Silversun Pickups as a rich man’s Smashing Pumpkins—that texture only crops up now and then on Tenterhooks. “Long Gone” is a dazzling song almost entirely consisting of acoustic guitar. “Running Out of Sounds” is a quiet piano ballad sung by Monninger. She also sings on “Au Revoir Reservoir,” a song that relies heavily on audio manipulation and synths to formulate a curiously catchy sound. If there’s one track on the record that could be considered classic Silversun Pickups, it’s the last one, “Hot Wired,” on which Aubert handles vocals and does integrate some distorted guitar.
All in all, Aubert—who briefly lost his hearing in one ear during the making of Tenterhooks—and Monninger divvy up vocal duties nearly evenly on Tenterhooks. Silversuns Pickups’ first few albums (also including 2009’s Swoon and 2012’s Neck of the Woods) packed a crunch, but one that was still friendly to the ear; they were more Raisin Bran than Cheerios. Tenterhooks, then, seems to contain 10 different cereals that your three-year-old dumped into a big bowl. The fact that the record works is a mystery, and indicates that Silversun Pickups are a fully realized band, much like Sonic Youth demonstrated during their evolution from Goo to A Thousand Leaves, or Sleater-Kinney from One Beat to The Woods. Silversun Pickups aren’t in that elite company yet, but they’re getting damn close.
