![]() During the course of work on Widow’s Weeds, Lester also faced the death of his father. Midway through recording, which was split into two segments to accommodate Vig’s touring itinerary with Garbage, Aubert decided to make a personal change – responding to a period of depression by getting sober. The lighting-quick stuff that goes on, almost second nature, is like, ‘Holy shit.’ Butch and I are talking while something’s being played back and in the middle of the conversation, he’ll go: ‘Hey Billy, on that left thing…’ and Billy will go: ‘I already did it, I knew you were going to ask that.’ And I’m like, ‘What’s happening?!’” In the weeds “The legacy that Butch has became pretty apparent – you feel the experience. “What he’s done was in the back of our minds but we kind of forgot about that – everything with us is very present tense,” Aubert says. Vig’s discography casts a long shadow, but Silversun Pickups found it relatively easy to sidestep any expectations associated with that history, instead focusing on utilising his accumulated wisdom and the expertise of his right-hand man, Billy Bush, in the here and now. Fuckin’, a week of emails, and it’s easier to go right to the source.” I sent him a text saying, ‘Hey, do you want to make a record in the summer?’ And that was it, he was in. “At one point, there was a week-long email chain with our management and the band and I just realised that… we should ask Butch Vig about this. “The only person who wasn’t aware of this discussion is Butch,” he laughs. When it came time to track Widow’s Weeds, he pitched Vig to the rest of the band, who were immediately onboard. “Then we think it’s time to move on.”įortunately, Aubert had already received a first-hand look at how Vig operates after being invited to sing on The Chemicals, Garbage’s 2015 Record Store Day single. “The second time around is a whole other adventure with somebody,” Aubert says. ![]() After collaborating with Dave Cooley on their first two outings, and Jacknife Lee on sets three and four, album five was an opportune moment to change things up again. Working with Vig, the Garbage drummer and producer behind legendary records by Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth, was another element in Silversun Pickups exploring their wanderlust. ![]() ![]() Where Better Nature relied on synths to balance out the lingering influence of shoegaze on the band’s sound, here they have embraced traditional instrumentation to round out some of their most open-ended compositions to date. Far from being a simple starting point, though, the effects of this shift can readily be seen in the varied textures of the finished LP. So, for the first time in Silversun Pickups’ two-decade career, Aubert’s writing began with an acoustic guitar, specifically his Gibson Hummingbird. ![]() “Because of how we removed a lot of organics from our previous records on purpose, especially the last one, which we wanted to sound like a fever dream, my wanderlust went towards acoustics and strings.” “Songs start jumping around my brain and when there’s enough of them, I have to do something or I’m going to go crazy,” Aubert says. Wanderlust is an interesting choice of phrase, given that Aubert is describing the first extended period of downtime he and his bandmates – bassist Nikki Monninger, drummer Chris Guanlao and keyboard player Joe Lester – had enjoyed in a couple of years, but it’s one he returns to several times when describing the artistic drive that powered the revamped writing process of the group’s new LP, Widow’s Weeds. ![]()
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