“Running out of Sounds” may be an ill-advised song title for a band celebrating the 20th anniversary of its first album; this is especially true for musicians who have treated their debut as a sacred blueprint for all the records that have followed. So give Silversun Pickups some credit: They spend their seventh album, Tenterhooks—which contains a song with the aforementioned title—circling through the same sounds they’ve mined for two decades, blissfully oblivious to the irony.
Not that Silversun Pickups act as if they're middle-aged on Tenterhooks. Unlike so many rock bands with members facing their 50s, they don’t embrace new fashions in a frantic attempt to remain relevant. Nor do they spend the record gazing at the past and mulling their own mortality. No, the L.A. quartet sticks to their tried and true, blending dreamy harmonies and blissed-out guitars as if no time had passed since the 1990s.
There’s one small problem: Silversun Pickups themselves weren’t part of the dream of the ’90s, a fact that adds to the creeping feeling of stasis on Tenterhooks. When Silversun Pickups surfaced during the great alt-rock revival of the late 2000s, their insistent rhythms and underlying sense of vigor made Carnavas, their 2006 debut, feel fresh. Over the ensuing years, their growing professionalism created a gulf between their underground inspirations and their own output. The chasm only grew when they struck up a collaboration with Butch Vig, the producer behind alt-rock landmarks by Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and his own band, Garbage, his studio skills smoothing out any remaining rough edges in the group.
Tenterhooks is the third Silversun Pickups album in a row to be produced by Vig, and there’s a palpable sense of ease to the partnership. He swaddles their overdriven swirl in comforting clothes, weaving fuzzy riffs and candied electronics into Brian Aubert and Nikki Monninger’s sighing vocals. There are shifts in tempo and tone: “Au Revoir Reservoir” plays like heightened nocturnal new wave, giving way to the gallop of “Wakey Wakey,” which in turn leads into the glassy shimmer of “Witness Mark.” But Vig’s production is seamless enough that Tenterhooks starts to feel like one continuous song.
There are pleasures to be had within these spacey spirals. For listeners of a certain disposition, the marriage of dream-pop harmonies and distorted guitars can feel as welcoming as a warm bath. But the familiarity can also reveal how the years are starting to pile up for Silversun Pickups. It isn’t that they lack urgency—they never specialized in catharsis, anyway—but that they’re circling the same ideas they’ve had since the start. Vig’s masterly production gives the album a seasoned gleam and punch, but his period-specific details only exacerbate the weary undercurrent on Tenterhooks; it makes the album feel stagnant, as if the Silversun Pickups are caught in an endless loop. Maybe that's an inevitable problem of trading in the music of the past: At a certain point, you're bound to run out of sounds.
