Since then, the guitar-driven alt-rock band’s nucleus has remained Brian Aubert on guitar and vocals, original member Nikki Monninger on bass and vocals, Christopher Guanlao on drums and Joe Lester on keys.
That same lineup will play San Antonio’s Aztec Theatre on Tuesday, Sept. 24, as part of the quartet’s current tour.
Aside from Monninger’s relatively brief hiatus from the band a decade ago due to a maternity leave, that remarkable longevity isn’t lost on anyone in the group, which maintains a career-long homebase in Los Angeles.
Aubert initially jokes that the group’s tenure comes down to a simple question: “What else are we going to do?”
However, he opens up about the band’s life together with minimal prompting.
“You know, I think it’s something that you re-evaluate all the time,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s nothing conscious about it, we don’t get into child’s pose to discuss it. But when you’ve always had a thing, is it still energetic? Do you still feel compelled to do it?”
It didn’t hurt that the members had some degree of familiarity with each other before they climbed in a van together, Aubert added.
“We were friends for a little while before being in a band, and so you get a lot of the personal stuff stripped out of it in a certain way,” he said. “You already know how to read each other, and especially now that we’ve gotten so good at touring, you know when people need space. I say that all the time, but everybody has their role in the band. I’m going to lead it in certain ways. It’s just natural in the way that’s happened. But no one’s higher up than anyone else. And no one’s fireable, unless it was for something absolutely insane. Touring with other bands, you see some that think, ‘If only we could get this other drummer.’ We don’t go into that conversation. It’s not on the table, which is probably why we’re still around.”
Silversun Pickups also has an interesting 21st century connection in that the band’s been active through pretty much all of the iterations of music that have been released and promoted over the past quarter-century, experiencing most of the options that could come their way.
Digital music’s been around since the group’s beginning, for example. It’s also known different record labels. It’s had music licensed for video games, TV and film. It’s toured as a headliner, in support and played festivals. It’s recorded short live spots for the hip streaming channels, and it’s offered up the occasional, clever cover.
And it’s even done something that not all contemporary rock bands can claim.
“We do get played on the radio,” Aubert said with just a hint of amusement.
That, plus a host of other factors, have enabled Silversun Pickups to build a fan base through time, keeping long-term listeners in the audience while continuing to blend in new followers.
“We’ve had songs in video games and played Letterman and knew Napster, so people have found us in so many ways,” Aubert said. “Maybe they heard us playing along to us on a video game, or we’re that weird band that still gets onto the radio, so it’s all about different pockets. I am very curious, having been around for so long, to look out into the crowd and see that it’s much more diverse than it used to be. The ages are all over the place. There’re teenage punk-rock girls, older dudes, little kids. I don’t know when they all started listening to us.”
Touring has always been a part of the group’s build, though, and Silversun Pickups only had the obligatory time off because of the pandemic. Aside from that stretch, the group’s been at it ever since the release of its initial EP, Pikul, in 2005. Things accelerated with the release of the debut album Carnavas in 2006, which featured the indie hit “Lazy Eye.” Five more albums have followed.
For the current round of touring, the group plans to pull from the band’s last album, 2022’s strong effort Physical Thrills, which was produced by Butch Vig of the band Garbage.
“We did some pretty heavy touring on it,” Aubert said, noting that for this round “we’ll lean into it a little, not as heavily as on the previous tour. Now it’s more about weaving in and out of different eras.”
Aubert said Silversun Pickups’ work on Physical Thrills holds up well in the catalog.
“I haven’t listened to it in a while,” he said. “With most bands, the most that we ever listen to a record is when it’s not done. By the time it is done, you’ve heard it a few times and you rehearse it and interpret it live. Now it’s just about swimming in the live experience of it, which is really fun — seeing how it all works in juxtaposition with the older songs. And every time a Physical Thrills song comes on the set, I’m really proud of it.”
$41-$119, 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 24, Aztec Theatre, 104 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 812-4355, theaztectheatre.com.
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