A few hours before they were to play the Hordern Pavilion in support of Birds of Tokyo, I sat down with Brian and Nikki of Silversun Pickups. Hailing from Los Angeles, we spoke about the tour, the weather, Melbourne, Muse,, Guitar Hero and Asian cuisine… read on!
Welcome back to Australia! I was going to start this interview by talking about the weather here …
Nikki: Such a beautiful day!
… But I was just informed that Los Angeles had its hottest day on record.
Brian: Yeah something like 46 degrees, in Silverlake where we live, near Downtown LA. But we haven’t been home much lately, but we knew that this Summer has been pretty mild. So it’s pretty insane. Usually these are the months where we pay for our sins of having beautiful weather all the time. But finally we had a nice mild Summer and then we got these last few weeks of September that just killed everyone. Luckily we’ve missed it, but we’ll probably be going right back into it.
Talking about weather, it was funny, our tech Scott, I think he just misunderstood the notion of Australia. All he packed were like…
N: All he packed were shorts.
B: He had no clue that it was coming out of winter. In Melbourne and Tasmania it was just like… what the hell! Adelaide was pretty cold as well. But Brisbane and Sydney have just been gorgeous. Melbourne was actually colder than Hobart!
But it’s a beautiful city though isn’t it?
B: Yeah we loved it there. It reminds me of San Francisco. A beautiful cold city on the water! You just deal with it.
And how has the tour gone? You’ve been on the road supporting Birds of Tokyo, but you also played a headline gig in Melbourne the other day…
B: Yep. Our headline tour started in Melbourne and ended in Melbourne. Things have gone by so fast this trip. Last time we were here we were here for about 3 weeks, and we were so looking forward to coming back – it’s hard to believe it’s…
N: … almost over.
B: Yeah it sucks really *laughs*.
N: And there’s so much travel in between the shows. We’ve been flying a lot.
B: It’s such a bummer because we really love it a lot down here.
You must come back more often!
B: Oh I wish we could! It’s just the logistics of getting down here are so difficult. We tried a while, but we’ve been touring our record constantly since February of last year. Just going back and between Europe and the States – and then our headline tour got pushed back because we were supporting Muse all of a sudden… and so figuring out when to come to Australia, just wasn’t on the cards – it wasn’t happening. And it was really bumming us out. There was a point where we thought we wouldn’t get down here at all. But then we got a call from the Birds of Tokyo boys asking us to join them, literally as soon as we’d finished our headline tour of the States. So the timing was perfect, and it all went through and we were so excited. It couldn’t have worked out better.
Had you met the Birds boys before?
B: No. We didn’t know anything about them to be honest.
N: They were so nice and welcoming to us.
B: They were just really big fans and then since we’ve been with them we’ve really getting along, they’re just so nice. Really a bunch of great guys. And then there’s a band playing before us called The Chemist, who are really great too. Clearly all the bands are really different, but that’s the fun of it really. The shows have been great. The Melbourne (headline) show was reallllllly great. It was so nice to be able to play all of our songs, a big set in front of a crowd who knew them. Doing 45 minute sets is great and all, but we have long songs! So we’ve been cramming as much as we could into the (Birds support shows). The Corner is a great venue, too. For a cold city, Melbourne has a lot of outdoor roofed areas.
Whenever we come to city we always think about what our city needs. It’s like how come there are so many beautiful outside bars in Melbourne, and it’s freezing, but in LA we have none of that.
There’s the smoking area at the Echo!
B: *laughs* Yeah I guess we have that. But Melbourne just has a lot of cool bars.
N: The Toff or something like that? That was great.
B: Part of the fun of this tour has been going back to cities we’ve been to before – except for Hobart – so we’ve been able to explore a bit more of each city, and revisit places you liked and then bounce off of that. Even Adelaide, where we landed first for this tour, we went straight to this Thai restaurant that blew our minds last time, and made tracks from there…
N: Such good Thai food here!
B: What people in the States don’t realise about Australia is the idea of Australasia, and how much Asian influence is in Australia which is what makes it so unique and fascinating. It is truly the best Asian food I’ve ever eaten. It’s like Mexican food in Los Angeles or Indian food in London – they’re not playing around!
You mentioned touring with Muse – and looking at your Tour Dates, you really have toured with some of the biggest names in international contemporary music.
B: Oh yeah.
What have been some of the highlights – if you can even narrow it down.
B: I feel like we’ve been really lucky because we’ve ended up touring with bands who are all just really great. One of the things we’ve learnt from touring with these bands is just how generous and warm people they all are. And that’s great because that’s how we feel it should be. So every tour that we’ve done with these bands it’s stayed on that level – even Muse and Placebo. It’s been amazing.
But I think my favourite thing that happened was when our first show with Muse, and we were trying to figure out where we were going to stand, because there were a million things and I didn’t want to step there because I might explode. Nikki moved a little mirror, and it turned out that’s where the lasers hit, and we kept thinking while we were watching Muse that there was a laser shooting someone in the face.
N: I saw a shiny thing, I wanted to touch it.
B: So yeah we’ve been really lucky with these bands – not just the quality of their music but the people too. I think it would be a difficult situation to be with people who were just assholes.
You’re not just sharing the stage after all – you’re sharing the roads and the skies!
B: Yeah exactly. Muse were interesting too, because when we tour with a band, we get to know everyone, all the crew who’s building the stage and all that. And when we were with Muse our schedules were so crazy that we were doing press all the time, and they were doing press all the time, so we hardly ran into one and other. But then after each show there’d be a time when we’d all get to sit down and drink some wine. Talk about Star Wars and whatever – laser beams in the face.
So talking now about Swoon. It came out last year but this is the first time you’ve toured it in Australia. How are the songs being received here and what have been some of your favourite tracks to play – as the cliché question goes!
N: I like that we start with Growing Old is Getting Old. I think that’s a nice way to start our set.
B: I think that if we were playing this album back home, even though we’re still in love with Swoon, we’re starting to let it go a little bit. But now that we’re here, it’s fresh again, because we haven’t played these songs for these people. And it does give you energy. It’s a great way to end the tour of this record – which Australia is. We’ve got a few festivals here and there, but this is the last tour for us. It’s nice to end it on this note.
Not last tour forever I hope?
B: Well maybe – you never know!
N: Only for this album.
B: It’s always in your brain though to think that it could be your last tour… we might decide we don’t want to do it anymore. But hopefully not *laughs*
Is the plan to get back into the studio and see what happens?
B: I hope so.
N: That’s the ideal.
B: We’ve just got to go home first and be living our life to get inspired and get our creative sides on. But yeah, this is a great way to pause before that begins.
Speaking of which, I must mention Coaster Festival. Can you talk about that experience?
N: Yeah that was a fun show.
B: We just showed up – we literally arrived, had 5 minutes to set up. Our sound guy just ran out there, and then we played and we left. It happened so fast. That was our Coaster. And as we were leaving the Birds guys were arriving and we’re like “go for it! All right man see you later!”
Is that the first festival you’ve played in Australia?
B: Yeah, I think it was. I hadn’t thought about it like that. Awww…
N: … memories!
B: It was pretty fun though. Chemist played as well didn’t they? We didn’t get to see anything!
So now “Lazy Eye “, which ended your Coaster set, has been a bit of a video game whore over the years…
B: *laughs” yeah.
… It’s actually one of the few songs to appear on BOTH Rock Band AND Guitar Hero. Do you have a preferred between the two?
B: I’d say Rock Band but I don’t feel qualified to say…
N: Yeah I don’t feel qualified to answer that question either.
B: But yeah I would have originally said Rock Band because you can play all the instruments, but I think with Guitar Hero you can too now. I dunno… I’m curious with those games and how long they can go for. Will they keep using the same songs over and over again?
They’re so great for the industry though. Getting kids interested in music in any way is such a positive thing.
B: 100% totally agree with you on that. People bitch about that and it blows my mind. How curmudgeoning could you possibly be? Some kid is learning about music. And the ways we learn about music has changed, especially in the States. It’s gotten a lot more limited. And gone are the days of the record store and the clerk who recommends you a band. Everyone who sells music also sells washing machines. So something like Guitar Hero gets kids immersed in it and that’s great. I just suck at it.
