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Digital Culture

Silversun Pickups

In one of my few recent real musical finds, I give you Silversun Pickups (or sspu as they’re known online). I picked up their album Carnavas after randomly hearing Melatonin while browsing in a record store (yeah, they still have those!). I recommend you head over to amazon or youtube and give them a listen, because I’m not sure that I can give their sound a good description. It’s like….Smashing Pumpkins meets Toad the Wet Sprocket, or what Coheed & Cambria might sound like if they partied with The Doors. Melody and guitar effects merge with cosmic keyboards and a great sense of rhythm to create a wall of sound that I’m finding addictive.

The amazon reviews all talk about how they’re part of some grunge revival (ummm….ok, now I feel really old). That I’m not so sure of, but I do know that I’m digging on them more than any band I’ve heard in some time.

Here’s some more info on them from their label. Evidently I’m just not plugged in to pop culture anymore, since they’ve played the Tonight Show and Carson Daily. But even so, they’re really great…check them.

Tags Digital Culture, Music

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

One reply on “Silversun Pickups”

Yep, they are good. Been listening to them on Indie Pop Rocks, and recently happened to see them perform at Virgin, but haven’t been to a show yet. Get the Pikul EP. Lots of good songs on it.

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