Silversun Pickups have always thrived in the space between nerves and noise, where melody trembles just enough to feel dangerous. On Tenterhooks, the Los Angeles band sound like veterans but still with a hunger, knuckles white and eyes fixed on whatever comes next. Tenterhooks is a lean, no-frills set of ten charged tunes that feel wired directly into the current moment. Brian Aubert, Nikki Monninger, Christopher Guanlao, and Joe Lester have built their career on a restless push-and-pull, at times urgent and at others elegant, with both volume and vulnerability. That’s the kind of tension that’s carried them to this point, uncompromising and still ending up with top ten albums, big singles, and a reputation as one of modern rock’s most quietly durable bands.

This time around, they make a deliberate choice to strip things down. “We wanted to make a tight record that could fit on one vinyl with five songs on each side,” Aubert says. The result is the impatient and aggressive Tenterhooks, a record that crackles with apprehension but never sacrifices the band’s gift for hooks. The sessions began as the world lurched into another uncertain phase, and that unease seeps into every corner of the record. Even when the lyrics don’t spell it out, the vibe does. Everything sounds closer, louder, more exposed.

The first single, “The Wreckage,” set the tone. Harmonics shimmer around a loose, prowling bassline as Guanlao’s drums hit with purpose. It’s classic Silversun Pickups energy, but sharper, like the band scraped away excess until only the nerve endings remained. Throughout the album, Monninger’s bass and vocals anchor the chaos, while Joe Lester’s keyboards add texture and tension, coloring the negative space as much as the noise itself.

Produced by Butch Vig, Tenterhooks is a full-circle moment. Vig was behind the board for the band’s 2006 debut Carnavas. “There was something in the air,” Aubert says. “It seemed as if everyone was on tenterhooks waiting for whatever was next.” The album captures that suspended breath, that sense of living between beats. In doing so, Silversun Pickups remind us how they’ve made it this far.