“We know that garage. We know Jacknife’s shorthand, it’s like lightening. We interpret each other,” says Silversun Pickups vocalist and guitarist Brian Aubert, describing the Topanga recording sessions for Better Nature (New Machine Recordings), the Silverlake band’s newest studio album produced by Jacknife Lee. Aubert grew up a couple of miles from the garage recording studio, but he says his band’s last album, Neck of the Woods, was more of a nostalgic record. This new record finds the band, founded in 2002, more focused (he and bass player Nikki Monninger also have new infants), and Aubert says the sessions felt much more productive and intense than the 12-hour marathons of earlier years. As with the three other studio albums Silversun Pickups has released, Aubert, Monninger, Joe Lester (keyboards), and drummer Christopher Guanloa worked to create a defining sound for Better Nature. “There’s an open and spacious sonic vocabulary on this album. It’s grand, and usually we like to limit that,” Aubert adds.

That said, the 10-track album includes one composition that Aubert calls a “tiny” song. “Circadian Rhythm,” a duet with Monninger, had Aubert wondering how the originally acoustic track could fit amid the other musically dense songs. “In general, to be with Jacknife, is to be operating without control,” Aubert says. “We can’t be locked into our muscle memory.” Luckily, he notes, “Circadian Rhythm” was built to be rearranged. “It was ready to be fucked with in some way,” says Aubert, adding that he and Monninger tweaked it in the studio and will continue to do so at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever where they play live on Tuesday, September 29 and Wednesday, September 30.

By Elizabeth Varnell

Pictured: Los Angeles-based band Silversun Pickups at a photoshoot for their fourth studio album, Better Nature.
Photo by Claire Marie Vogel

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