Silversun Pickups

Finally, a young band that delivers. L.A.’s Silversun Pickups turned quite a few heads last year with a wonderful debut EP, Pikul, and thankfully their first full-length manages to live up to that early potential. Carnavas is a pretty uncomplicated record in that it is simple to work out how the band have ended up sounding like they do. Despite a pretty obvious Smashing Pumpkins influence, it manages to stop short of being too much of a grungy throwback and even adds a shiny new coat of paint to what could have been a dated sound. They might just be recycling some cool ’90s alt-rock, but they do it well. Throw in some neat vocal interplay between guitarist Brian Aubert and bassist Nikki Monninger and Carnavas becomes a pretty easy album to like. The ironic thing is that this type of music is going to sound brand new to the target audience. If MTV still played music, they would be all over these guys. Instead, Silversun Pickups are going to have to wait until one of their songs ends up on an episode of Laguna Beach instead. It will happen.