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London,
John Aizlewood's rating
Reader rating
Description: The Californian band perform indie-rock songs from their album Swoon.
Phone: 0207930 2020
Website: www.heaven-london.com
Email: info@heaven-london.com
Trains: Tube/Rail: Charing Cross 
Extra info: Pub, Air Conditioning
Times: Dec 10, 7pm
Price: £13
Main man: Brian Aubert was all cheery bonhomie, bad beard and anguished voice
Part Sonic Youth, part Death Cab For Cutie and many more parts Smashing Pumpkins and Secret Machines, Los Angeles’s Silversun Pickups have taken their native land by overdubbed storm with their second album, Swoon.
Britain has yet to tumble but even if dense, vaguely anguished pop is far from 2009’s most fashionable sound, they may yet surprise us all.
Helpfully, they displayed none of the aloofness or dislikeability of some of their forebears.
Instead, they turned out to be four distinct characters: singer/guitarist Brian Aubert was all cheery bonhomie, bad beard and anguished voice, while Joe Lester had an even more upsetting beard and remained hunched over his keyboards like a mad professor from central casting.
Meanwhile, behind them, Christopher Guanlao drummed like the Muppets’ Animal and had to stand to reach his cymbals and, just as Smashing Pumpkins had a female bassist (D’arcy Wretzky), so have The Silversun Pickups.
Nikki Monninger’s bass seemed too big for her but dressed as a refugee from Fifties US suburbia, smiled and sang as if she were a woman without a care in the world, as she unleashed floorquaking bassline after floorquaking bassline.
For all their disparate selves, the foursome marched as one, making a supremely well-drilled, mesmerising racket which veered from the almost electro opener Growing Old Is Getting Old to the dizzying soundscapes of the closing Common Reactor.
In between, Rusted Wheel and Panic Switch were packed with buried pop hooks, Lazy Eye dipped into psychedelia and Aubert and Monninger’s voices gelled gloriously on It’s Nice To Know You Work Alone.
Right now, all they lack is the one truly great song to catapult them from Heaven (and the sweat still runs off the walls) to somewhere more comfortable, if less atmospheric.
But everything else is in place. Don’t bet against them.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
