Silversun Pickups Stroll Through Their Career

Coming up on their five-year anniversary, Silversun Pickups are finally working on a debut album. If you're thinking that's a bit of a laid-back attitude for a band, well, lead singer Brian Aubert won't argue with you.

Left to their own devices, they might still be "fiddling around" in some L.A. garage. After jamming for a couple of weeks, one band member mailed a ghetto blaster-recorded "demo" in to the CMJ music festival, basically as a joke. CMJ called their bluff, inviting them to the 2000 showcase.

"We just did that because it would be funny, like 'No way in hell' — you know?" Aubert says with a laugh. "And then when we got in, we were like, 'Oh shit!' and then we were like, 'Well we gotta go.'

"We just wanted to go to New York and see a bunch of bands and do whatever we could — and then, like, literally from that one decision, we've been playing from then 'til now, straight."

The band have been thrown into many things. Aubert became the "accidental singer" only because someone had to fill the position. Forced into legitimacy by the festival, the Pickups started to gig around Los Angeles, but still had no imminent plans to record — until their fans pressed the issue.

"We just didn't feel we were ready for it yet, we were still working stuff out," Aubert says. "But after a little while we'd see these CDs being passed around, little bootlegs of live shows.

"And they were so horrible, they just sounded so bad. We were like, 'Dude, we gotta do something, we've got to give people something better.' Some of the recordings we did are on the EP."

The EP is Pikul, a self-described "mish-mash" of seven songs from the band's first five years. Recordings go back to 2002, though the material was all freshly mixed for a release this summer. With a full-length debut in the works for 2006, Aubert hopes to craft something more cohesive — and his band is finally ready, even if he still doesn't quite feel like a pro.

"Not really, but you don't really see the change, you know? It's almost like gaining weight or something, like if you're hanging around somebody the whole time you don't really notice. So when I see old tapes or something like that, I'm like, 'Oh my god! How did we make it? How did we not just go home and crumble?' But then that makes me feel like, 'OK, maybe we have sharpened our edges a little.'"