Silversun Pickups interview

For a band who refer to themselves as non-planners, there might just be a clever strategy in play here after all: release your debut album in 2007 and build up a big enough fan base to propel one of your singles into the top five on the charts, yet still manage to remain far enough under the radar that the Grammys don’t get around to tagging you with a “Best New Artist” nomination until three years later. But with the success of the band’s second album Swoon having likely ruined any chance of being able to remain millimeters below the radar, bassist/vocalist Nikki Monninger tells Beatweek about the past year, which has seen the band’s music appear everywhere from television to video games, plans for their summer tour, and the name of their third album (well, not really…)

How’s the tour going so far? You guys have been out on the road for a little while with Muse.

So far so good. They’ve been really good to us so far, and we hang out a little bit with them after shows. They’ve got a pretty busy schedule, but we usually stick around after our show and catch some of theirs. They’ve got quite a laser show going on.

It seems like every time you guys hit the road, you’re paired up with another cool band. Do you try to plan it that way?

No, we’re not really planners. We’ve been actually trying to plan a full U.S. tour that keeps getting pushed back because we get these great opportunities. So we don’t set out for it, but when they asked us to tour we were pretty excited about that, so we actually pushed back our headlining tour. June and July we’ll be out doing our own shows.

Swoon has been out for a year now, Panic Switch did really well as a single last year, but I just saw the video for the new single Substitution, and I’ve got to admit, that video’s kind of strange with the musical chairs and everything.

Yeah I think we wanted it to kind of be bizarre like that. We wanted to work with The Malloy Brothers, we liked their work from before, and they came up with the idea and we just liked how it was a slightly bizarre scenario, so it seemed to just work.

It looked like the women in the cake walk were taking that really seriously. I was wondering if they were starting to get competitive with each other.

It was an actual game. They started off and we didn’t know who was going to win, we just played it like that and I think they won something at the end. But they actually were playing.

Speaking of Panic Switch, it’s in Rock Band 2, which is the biggest game of the year. Is that weird that your music is being used in a video game? Does that seem surreal?

I think it’s great. We all grew up playing video games, so it’s kind of in our DNA. And I have younger brothers who are still playing video games. It’s a nice way, especially now that everything’s going digital and people aren’t buying as many CDs as ten years ago, it’s just another avenue to get our music out there.

You guys have such a reputation for being laid back and down to earth. Did you enjoy the pomp and circumstance of something like attending the Grammys in January?

We didn’t go in there expecting or thinking that we would win, we just went thinking wow, this is a crazy thing that’s happening to us and let’s just enjoy the night, and it was fun to get all dressed up like that. And my boyfriend was actually nominated for a Grammy as well, so it was a nice night for us, although we were both losers. It was still fun.

A lot of people found it strange that you were nominated “Best New Artist” this year, as opposed to back in 2007 or something. Did you guys find that strange too?

I think we found the whole thing strange, so we weren’t surprised that they would pick us up for new artist, because it takes years to get on the radar of Grammys, they’re not going out to clubs and getting the best demos. The whole thing was kind of bizarre. It was just a nice honor to be nominated and we just took it as that.

But if you guys are nominated for “Best New Artist” again next year then I think there’s got to be something wrong, right?

[Laughs] I think that’s illegal.

You’ve been posting a bunch of photos on Twitter. Are you just a natural born photographer, are you taking pictures all the time you’re out and about?

Yeah I do, I take pictures all the time. But it’s nice now that our phones are getting better for pictures, because it is hard to carry a camera all the time, so we take all our pictures on our iPhones. We just discovered things like Camera Bag and Polaroid applications that make them seem a little… we like the old school idea. We used to shoot with Polaroid, it’s just hard to get it now. But yeah, I have so many photos of all the years we’ve been together, and I make little albums. I like the idea of keeping a visual history like that.

Are there other iPhone apps you’re into, outside of photography?

I like playing Boggle [laughs]. The Google Maps app all the time. We should become spokespeople because we all love our iPhones, because you get to a new city and you can immediately find yourself on a map and see what’s around you. Applications like Yelp, we have to use these every day, because every day it’s a new city. As we get used to the city after we come a few times, it’s a little different.

But in general, we move every day and I try to make the most of it and do something in the cities that we’re in. Right after we talk, I’m gonna go over to the Modern Art Museum [in Fort Worth], so I’ve already mapped that out. Things like this have made it easier to be on the road and keep in contact with your friends and loved ones at home.

In that moment when you realized David Letterman had your CD upside down, did you stop and think about what you were doing, or did you just instinctively reach for it?

I watched it afterwards and the whole thing seemed to be forever that I was thinking in my head “Oh he’s got it backwards,” so at first I wasn’t going to but then I didn’t want him to look like he didn’t know what we has doing, so I turned it over for him. And he had been sick that day, and I’m such a big fan of him, and I just wanted to have him not have it backwards. But he seemed to be a good sport about it, and we’ve really enjoyed both our times on Letterman. But yeah, at the time it seemed like forever, I was like “Oh, I’ve just got to tell him.” But then when you look at it, it’s only a second or two.

We threw it open to our readers, and someone wanted to know, with you and Muse playing on the same stage every night, are you guys rubbing off on each other musically?

I’m sure subconsciously yes, but we’ve been so busy watching their laser show, it’s hard to watch anything else but that. I see some lasers in our future.

Really?

We’ll have one. We’ll start off with one, because we can’t afford more than that.

I know you’re still touring on Swoon, but it has been out for a year. Have you guys put any thought toward your next record?

Not yet, because it’s hard to concentrate on making an album when we’re touring and having shows almost every day. And on our days off we’re just resting up for the next bunch of shows. But our next goal is just to do this headlining tour, and then maybe after that we’ll slow down and start thinking about the next album, but no, we haven’t gotten to it.

I figured as much, but one of our readers wanted you to reveal the title of the next Silversun Pickups album.

It’s “Use Your Illusion III and IV” like Guns N’ Roses. I don’t think they copyrighted III and IV yet.

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