Photos and Review by Jeff Palmucci
Show photos HERE
The first time I heard the Silversun Pickups was not that long ago. A friend of mine from work and I were driving from Boston to Princeton to do a round of on campus interviews. We figured it was about the same elapsed time to get down as a plane, and I had a shiny new car I wanted to try out. Unfortunately, we didn’t plan on the massive holiday weekend traffic coming back up. Ugh.
On the upside, we had a shiny new convertible and a Spotify Premium account, which he took advantage of by putting together an extensive playlist of stuff that I didn’t listen to a lot. Prominently featured were the Pixies, Jake Bugg, Dinosaur Jr, and of course, the Silversun Pickups.
The Pickups have a guitar heavy, kind of trippy sound that I immediately fell in love with. That, along with Brian Aubert’s tenor vocal range and Nikki Monninger’s accompaniment gives these guys a unique sound that you should check out. To give you a feel some of my favorites off of YouTube: Lazy Eye, Panic Switch, Well Thought Out Twinkles. Go ahead, give them a listen. I’ll wait here.
They played last Wednesday to a pretty packed House of Blues. The crowd was fun and pretty laid back. So much so, that when I wanted to get a picture of the crowd flipping off some friends of mine that wouldn’t come out to the show, I had to convince one of the girls that I didn’t want her to flash a heart sign, just the bird. Took some convincing. I got the shot, but all though their fingers are saying f-u, their faces are not.
The tour is in support of their newish Better Nature album, and the set contains half from that album, and half older hits. Nikki Monninger is back on tour, after a long maternity leave to have twin girls. She says she’s glad to be back, and I’m glad to have her.
It’s kind of cool what you can discover sitting in a car waiting behind a ton of traffic and a Spotify account. Keep telling yourself that when you head down to the Cape this summer.
Set List
- Cradle
- Well Thought Out Tinkles
- Nightlight
- Circadian Rhythm
- The Pit
- Little Lovers So Polite
- Friendly Fires
- Latchkey Kids
- Panic Switch
- Ragamuffin
- Lazy Eye
Encore
- Kissing Families
- Dots & Dashes
- Wild Kind