Neck of the Woods
Neck of the Woods sees Silversun Pickups lighting out for the territories, stretching the boundaries of their exhilarating psychedelia with confidence, invention, and undeniable ambition. Having long made their bones as masters of widescreen power, the Los Angeles-based band’s third Dangerbird Records album takes their filmic vision to another level entirely – this is full-on IMAX rock ‘n’ roll, in stereoscopic 3D and Sensurround. From the low-frequency thrust and motorik pulsebeat that drives “Mean Spirits” to the mesmerizing first single, “Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings),” the album fairly detonates with high definition creativity. Roomier rhythms and judiciously applied electronic shadings form a blissed out base camp for the band’s electrifying aural adventures, the elegiac landscapes of Neck of the Woods revealing an unbridled expansion of the already impressive SSPU sound. “There’s a playfulness,” says singer/guitarist/songwriter Brian Aubert, “a certain kind of freethinking experimentation that we were fooling around with. We wanted to just let it all fly.”
In the age of downloading and streaming, the L.A. alt-rock band still makes albums like it needs to take full advantage of a CD's storage capacity.
Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert has likened his band’s newest album, Neck Of The Woods, to a horror movie. That description reaches far beyond the record’s evocative title and quietly unsetting cover; while 2006’s Carnavas and 2009’s Swoon found the L.A. group awash in fuzzed-out, wide-eyed guitarscapes…
It's 2012. Let's not go down the road of determining whether or not Silversun Pickups sounds like or doesn't sound like Smashing Pumpkins (they do) (and it's okay). Let's instead talk about why _Neck of the Woods_ is the best mainstream rock album of the year.
'Neck Of The Woods' feels like a solid progression, even if it's not going to thrill with its originality.
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Silversun Pickups - Neck of the Woods review: What it loses in instinctive beauty, it almost makes up for in depth.