'We Were Inspired To Get Loud': Silversun Pickups On 'Tenterhooks' & Their Long-Awaited Return To Australia

Mary Varvaris

Silversun Pickups' Brian Aubert catches up with The Music and digs into their latest album, 'Tenterhooks,' ponders their longevity, and shares advice for emerging bands as the band readies for their first Australian tour in 14 years.

Silversun Pickups(Credit: Skylar Watkins)

Silversun Pickups

“Part of it is dumb luck,” Silversun Pickups vocalist Brian Aubert muses when he’s asked about the secret to the band’s longevity. But we think there’s a little bit more to it than that.

This July, the Los Angeles alternative rockers return to Australia for the first time in 14 years and will make their New Zealand debut. While it’s been a long time since fans Down Under have witnessed the band in action, it’s not that they’ve been quiet or gone on hiatus and reunited in between drinks.

In fact, since their last visit in November 2012 – where they also performed at Harvest Festival – Silversun Pickups have released another four albums. Their latest, Tenterhooks, arrived in February 2026.

20 years ago this July, Silversun Pickups released their debut album, Carnavas, with two of the record’s singles, Lazy Eye and Well Thought Out Twinkles, making an immediate, sizeable impact.

Lazy Eye was featured in the video games Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour, one of only 13 songs to be heard in both games. Plus, Millennial TV viewers heard the song in early episodes of Criminal Minds, Veronica Mars, The Hills, and The OC.

Defined by Aubert’s one-of-a-kind, distinctively androgynous vocal and catchy guitar melodies, Nikki Monninger’s consistently entrancing, earworm bass lines, drummer Christopher Guanlao knowing when to provide the tension and when to let the songs breathe, and keyboardist Joe Lester’s sense for melancholy, Silversun Pickups have always sounded unique and retained a loyal fanbase.

Even with the success of their early work, which led to tours alongside Foo Fighters and Muse, plus many a festival appearance, the band has never rested on their laurels or come close to becoming a nostalgia act.

It would be easy to embark on anniversary tours of some of their most beloved records, but Silversun Pickups are always laser-focused on the future.

Since the release of Carnavas, the band have regularly released more albums: Swoon followed in 2009, Neck of the Woods in 2012, Better Nature in 2015, Widows Weeds in 2019, Physical Thrills in 2022, and Tenterhooks earlier this year.

“On tenterhooks” means “waiting nervously for something to happen,” and album #7 from the rock veterans certainly teeters on the edges of an anxiety-ridden tightrope. Their third album to be produced by Butch Vig (Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins) marks the most records the acclaimed producer has worked on with a band other than his main act, Garbage.

Tenterhooks is a cinematic album, capturing the sounds of the band’s previous records while expanding even further. It tests quiet and loud dynamics, and there are stunning melodic moments (Witness Mark, Thorns and All, Long Gone) balanced with the gritty, high-energy tracks (The Wreckage, Wakey Wakey). It’s also tight and punchy – a deliberate move from the band.

“That’s what we said with Butch Vig,” Aubert comments. “I said, ‘Well, if we can do a 10-song thing, if we can stay the path…’ He helped us stay on the path, and I’m so happy that we did because I really love it. It’s just this chunk of a thing – I love playing these songs. It’s not as mischievous as the previous stuff, but it’s antsy.”

Explaining the decision to release a tight ten-track album further, Aubert reveals that the band were inspired by the frenetic energy of younger acts they were taking on tour—including Australia’s own Eliza & The Delusionals. By sharing the stage with that youthful, fiery energy, Silversun Pickups felt revitalised, realising they still had more to explore by plugging their guitars into amplifiers and playing them loudly.

“We were taking some incredible young bands on tour. It’s a luxury to have access to people who could be 20 years old and be able to be peers with them and exchange ideas and talk about music and tour together,” Aubert shares. “I think it’s a really interesting perspective—they’re looking at us for certain things, but I’m also looking at them and feeling a certain energy, and I’m grateful to have access to it.”

He adds, “I just saw the aggression and how loud these bands were getting, you know? I was inspired by them to think that there’s something still beautiful in the loud aggressiveness that’s not spent for us yet.”

While he ponders the band’s sound—Aubert doesn’t believe it’s been watered down over the years, but he realised that they needed to embrace discomfort and anxiety, musically, as they witnessed “everybody lose their minds, especially here in the States. We’re in a funky, pretty wild time. It’s hard not to let all that in.”

And by touring with younger bands, incensed by an increasingly inhabitable planet due to preventable disasters accelerated by climate change and the increase of fascism across the West, Silversun Pickups picked up on that rage, too.

“It’s weird when people say, ‘Stay in your lane’ and all that kind of shit, because what does that mean?” Aubert exclaims. “They’re interrupting our lives. They’re in our lane all day long! So, that and then these young kids playing music that are pissed off and they should be pissed off because they’re getting a world that people who are older just want to destroy before they hand it to them... I really fed off that. We were inspired to get loud.”

With their previous record, Physical Thrills, Silversun Pickups sounded grand. Again, an intentional decision. Their sixth record was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing the band wanted was for a collection of songs to sound like they were recorded simply because they had time.

“I wanted it to feel very purposeful and there was a lot of musicality in it,” Aubert tells. “After touring that record and being at that for such a long time, the only answer was to do something that was the opposite of that.

“I immediately wanted ten songs. That was one vinyl: the shortest record we’ve ever done. We’re not chintzing out on ideas and stuff, but it just felt like an impatient time, and I wanted actually an impatient record. If you’re into it, you just have to hear it again, you know, because it just comes in like a chunk.”

Adding that he wasn’t ever going to write songs about Donald Trump or the current US Republican administration, Aubert believes that it’s the band’s job to “represent the difference” to the opinions spouted and actions taken.

“There was that uncertainty with the way the world was moving, and also, I could just tell that there was a certain point in my life where things were about to change,” Aubert adds. “I think my relationships are all evolving, like my relationship with my son as he’s getting older is evolving. Like, things were changing, not for a worse scenario! They just started changing.

“So, I was lamenting a of all the stability that I’ve had and what’s coming next, even though what’s coming next can be great. I was just a little apprehensive, hence the title Tenterhooks.”

In the lead-up to the release of Tenterhooks, Butch Vig revealed in an interview that he played the record to Dave Grohl. The Foo Fighters’ frontman’s reaction? He described Silversun Pickups as “the most bitchin’ drum-and-bass group I’ve heard in a fucking long time.” The band have developed a special bond with Vig, one that runs deep between the producer and Aubert.

“He’s my favourite. We’re very close,” Aubert says warmly. “I’m close with his family, and we do this benefit with him in Madison, Wisconsin every January for epilepsy. His friendship has been one of the most meaningful things in my life, and our creative partnership together wildly works.”

Delving into the successful creative partnership, Aubert continues, “His quickness and my quickness and the way we operate is just a way to get a lot of hard things done in a way that feels joyful.

“We always understand what we’re doing, and we can’t take it too seriously because we just know how lucky we are that this is something we can get to do. And it is lucky, you know, being in 2026 and still putting out music you’re proud of. I think our biggest fear would be that we just walked through one of these things… but I don’t think we could.”

“I would hate to think that one day, we’d look back and go, ‘Oh, we could have tried something different.’ And it’s like, I don’t know, we get the opportunity to make another record. You gotta go for it, otherwise, what’s the point? What’s the point if we’re not still interested in things?”

Aubert adds, “As you have the luxury of being older, you’ve got to keep checking in on what it is or why you’re doing this or what you’re interested in or where your wanderlust lies. And if you keep doing that and keep being honest, then you’re always going to have something to chase. And when that doesn’t happen, well, that’ll be a different story. That’s when all the anniversary tours start.”

Despite his aversion to anniversary tours, Aubert still sings the old songs every night. Recent setlists have included classics such as Panic Switch, The Royal We, Well Thought Out Twinkles, Lazy Eye, Mean Spirits, and It Doesn’t Matter Why, alongside the new tracks from Tenterhooks.

And the band don’t plan on retiring those tracks anytime soon. While their relationship to those songs is different to casual and devoted fans, Aubert recognises their reputation as fan-favourites and enjoys jamming to them, night after night.

“Well, we don’t really have a relationship with those songs more than the others, do you know what I mean? They’re just part of our world,” he says. “I think that’s important for us – you know, somebody was like, ‘Wow, so you play Lazy Eye all the time?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, what kind of monster would I be to not do that!?’ That song is really important to people, and I’m not going to keep it from them.

“Of course, I’m going to play it or Panic Switch because it means a lot to people. There’s just some songs that cross further than your group. Sometimes, these songs go further than that and touch people out there. And I think that when we play our sets, we want to hit on all of the things.

“So, we’re going to do as much as we can to kind of deep cut it and play some stuff for the record, like play Mean Spirits for more of an album track. But then, we’ll also dump in the things that are on the radio and stuff, because there’s people there that are also just kind of curious about that. I think we are lucky that we have songs that people know like that, and so, of course, we’re going to try and play them.

“We never can play them all because it’s just gotten to a point where we have so many songs [laughs]. Our songs are long! We’re up there for as long as we should be.”

Aubert continues, “I feel that to get up there and just do obscure things has a little bit of an antagonistic point of view that we don’t carry. It’s lucky that we have songs that casual people know, and we don’t take that lightly. We’re not going to play them all, but we’ll play some. You know, we don’t reject those songs.

“The people that are coming to our shows are hardcore fans, casual fans, and people who have just been curious. I think that setlist dance is something that we find fun. It’s fun to be playing a couple of new songs and there’s people into it, but some people just like checking it out. And then you go into The Royal We and you see some light bulbs go off, like, ‘Oh, yeah, this band! I know this song. Wait a minute, they sang that?’”

So, Australian and New Zealand fans can take comfort in Aubert’s setlist musings—there’s something for everyone coming to these shows. It’s been a long time between visits, and the band is grateful that fans are still showing up, 14 years after their last tour.

“We’re always looking to play overseas, and we’ve done three different tours in Australia,” Aubert recalls. “Snow Patrol brought us for one, and they allowed us to do our own shows. And then I remember Birds Of Tokyo brought us out and we were allowed to do our own shows as well.

“And then this other festival brought us out and we did co-headlines with The Dandy Warhols and it’s just, the lack of being there, we feel it, you know? And logistics, yeah, logistics are crazy all over and it’s one of those things like, ‘Okay, we didn’t make it this time, or we didn’t make it this time,’ but somehow, all the stars aligned this time without us being brought there by a bigger band.”

This is a Silversun Pickups headline tour, and Aubert – a self-proclaimed “huge fan” of Lord Of The Rings – is thrilled that they’re even taking their show to New Zealand for the first time, plus finally returning to Australia.

“We’ve never played there before, so that’s really exciting. It feels like, oh my God, I can’t believe it. The first time we were in Australia, we were just like, ‘Okay, we’ll soak it in. Let’s go do everything we can. Let’s go to take pictures with the koalas in Brisbane, because we’re probably never going to be allowed to come back here again,’ right?

“The second time we came back there, we went, ‘Okay, I can’t believe we’re here again. Let’s go take more pictures with those koalas.’ And the third time was the same! And now it just feels… We’re really excited.

“It’s a loud world out there, and we’ve been doing this for quite some time. I don’t know what we did to be able to keep this sort of attention, but we’ll take it.”

Circling back to the mystery behind Silversun Pickups’ longevity in a scene and era that’s seen many bands come and go, Aubert’s statement that “dumb luck” is behind it can’t be the only factor at play.

“We’re a lucky band, you know? I think the thing that makes us the happiest is that even after all these years, we’re a band you still have to kind of find out about, and we’re not really shoved down your throat or top of the lists or these big things,” Aubert says. “We’re kind of like, if you know about us, then you know about us.”

The fans’ best-kept secret, then?

“Yeah, I like it! That’s how you’d hope to be. Like, you never want to live and die by someone’s word or a scene or a fad or anything,” he concurs. “You kind of want to just keep quietly moving along.

“We always notice that when we play festivals, now that we’ve been playing festivals for almost 20 years, we notice that our station in the festival is in the same spot, and a lot of the bands we remembered before the spot or after the spot have all disappeared. So, we’re just kind of like, ‘Let’s just stay quietly in this spot. Let’s not make it big.’”

Elaborating on what’s kept Silversun Pickups such a strong unit over the years, Aubert credits making records without outside influence, no pressure from labels, and being consistent in what they want to do.

He explains, “How we operate is nothing gets in when we’re making records—nothing in the world. I mean, we know we’re not in a hobbit hole, but we don’t really pay attention [chuckles].

“So, the only thing you can really do is the thing you want. You know, all we have is control of what the music is. We just do what it is that’s tickling our fancies and making us motivated to make music, and that’s all we can really think about. And then we deal with explaining ourselves later [laughs].

“That’s why I always tell bands, ‘At the end of the day, do you like this? Do you want to do this? Do you feel an outside source making you do this? Don’t listen to the outside sources. How are you going to do that? How are you going to listen? If you get a good review or a bad review, what does that matter? Does that change your mind?’

“Like, all that should have zero interest to you. You should literally be like, ‘I want to make this, and I want to do this. And this gets something out of our system, and this feels right. This feels like the correct soil for our feet to be in.’”

Even with having control of what the music turns out like, Aubert admits that sometimes even that’s outside of bands’ control. “Sometimes, it’s just limited from what we’re able to pull off,” he shares. “You just always try to be.”

“We always laugh because our band feels the same from the beginning. Now, I know after touring all this time and making records, I know we’ve gotten better, and I know we’re technically better than we were, but it always still feels out of reach.

“It feels like we’re in the same place, but because we’re constantly trying to move forward to a place that’s barely in our control. We’re up for 20 years in a perpetual position where, at any second, everything can come tumbling down,” Aubert trails off before he concedes with a laugh, “I think we like it that way.”

Silversun Pickups will tour Australia this July with special guests Coast Arcade. Tickets are available now.