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ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC

Essential New Music: Silversun Pickups’ “Better Nature”

SilversunPickups

Why Better Nature is billed as Silversun Pickups’ “most human music thus far” is something of a mystery. The slinky, dreamy Los Angeles quartet’s fourth full-length is hardly a stripped-down effort. Organic elements do not feel unusually emphasized; heavy processing has not been lightened. Indeed, the quest to locate the sweet spot between hyper-layered My Bloody Valentine-esque sonic shimmer, Spoon’s propulsive, tight rhythmic drive and the expansive electronica of Violator-era Depeche Mode (last heard on SP’s 2012 Neck Of The Woods) essentially carries on apace. (Pro tip: A band that releases a hallucinatory music film rather than a music video is probably not about to drop its Nebraska on your unsuspecting skull.)

Do evolution and cultivation rear their heads throughout? Sure. Yet, engaging and alluring as this fresh coat of cool on an easily recognizable sonic vehicle may be, Better Nature nonetheless remains an album destined to placate—not trip out—fans. Nurture kicked the shit out of nature this time out.

—Shawn Macomber