The Silversun Pickups‘ new album, Tenterhooks, is out Friday. It marks their third collaboration with Garbage drummer and Nevermind producer Butch Vig.
“The new album’s great,” Vig tells ABC Audio of Tenterhooks. “Some very powerful songs on it.”
Vig adds that he feels Tenterhooks “has a quite eclectic feel to it.”
“Yet it still sounds like Silversun Pickups,” Vig continues. “They have something in their DNA, the way they play together and [frontman] Brian [Aubert]’s guitar playing and his singing, and the way he and [bassist] Nikki [Monninger] sing, ’cause Brian can sing really high, as can Nikki, and sometimes, their voices, you can’t even really tell who’s singing what.”
Vig also produced the last two SSPU albums, 2022’s Physical Thrills and 2019’s Widow’s Weeds, making them his most frequent collaborator outside of Garbage in recent years.
“I love how they approach their music,” Vig says of the Pickups. “We don’t do demos and rehearse, we just start recording and see what happens.”
Silversun Pickups will play an album release show in Los Angeles on Friday, which will stream live on Veeps. They’ll launch a full U.S. tour Feb. 19 in Santa Ana, California.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
