Silversun Pickups BETTER NATURE

One could argue that in the year 2015 you can do better for a musical role model than Billy Corgan, and it sounds as if Silversun Pickups are slowly but surely reaching a similar conclusion. The Los Angeles-based alternative outfit have long coveted the scale and the drama of Smashing Pumpkins in their glory days, but on their fourth album (and the first for their own New Machine label), 2015's Better Nature, Silversun Pickups are still thinking big but with a more streamlined approach. The group's melodies are little changed, and the scope of the production and arrangements still leans to big sounds and broad dynamics, but this time out, Brian Aubert's guitars are audibly less interested in commanding their surroundings. Instead, Joe Lester's keyboards step to the forefront on these sessions, and Better Nature is full of clean surfaces and sweeping synthesizer patches that at times suggest a full-bodied variant on '80s synth pop, a sound reinforced by the clean, precise but lively pro