"It Doesn't Matter Why" by Silversun Pickups, Sunday, October 2, 2022

Ten years after releasing their breakthrough record, Swoon, Silversun Pickups released their fifth record, Widow's  Weeds. The band's first two records contained fast, pulsating shoegaze tracks, but by their third record, 2012's Neck of the Woods, the band started playing with their formula. By their fourth record, Better Nature, the band had gone against the rules they set for themselves for their debut record, Carnavas. That rule: to record a record relying mostly on guitar, bass, and some keys that the band could provide and relying mostly on organic sounds. 

IS IT BETTER ON THE OTHER SIDE? NO. Working with famed the famed Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins producer and Garbage founding member Butch Vig, Widow's Weeds is Silversun Pickups' attempt at rock greatness. But rock greatness looks different in the late 2010s when the genre suffered its lowest point. Widow's Weeds came four years after the band's fourth record, Better Nature. The lyrics to the band's first single from the record, "It Doesn’t Matter Why" are opaque like many of the band's tracks. However, lead singer Brian Auburt told Prelude Press that the lyrics on Widow's Weeds were more "open and exposed." Some of the openness of the record has to do with Auburt getting sober in the middle of the recording process, a process that delayed recording for the album. "It Doesn't Matter Why" seems to take a cue from the band's second track “The Royal We,” on Swoon, which deals with drug addiction. Musically taking a cue from "The Royal We,"  which initially broke the band’s rules by including a 16-piece orchestra, "It Doesn't Matter Why" also includes strings.  But the song sounds like a reconstructed version of the band. The song starts with a tinny bass riff that sounds almost like it could be an acoustic guitar and quickly becomes a catchy rhythmic song. Handclaps after the chorus relate the song to a primal energy that makes listeners even more engaged with the hypnotic rhythm. Like with most Silversun Pickups’ songs, except for the ones sung by bassist Nikki Monniger, Brian Aubert’s voice pierces through the wall of sound. 

WILL IT HELP YOU SLEEP BETTER AT NIGHT? IT WON'T. Paste called  the minimal, eerie video (see below) in which the band and several actors perform stretches and various actions in front of the camera "unsettling" and the song itself had an "underlying sense of anxiety and nihilism." I misheard the lyric as "It doesn't matter why we're numb, we're just numb" which seemed to make more sense than the real lyrics. I'm not sure what Aubert means by the apathetic statements throughout the song. The speaker asks questions and answers them in the most negative way. The song seems to be dealing with someone who is pushing a concerned loved one away. And this pushing away could be related to the speaker's addiction, as many times addicts don't want to change and push away those who care about them. The song could also be dealing with life in the spotlight when someone is concerned about that person. While many might know about the addiction, there are always more who can find out and it's shaming to the addict to confront his addiction. Unfortunately, the addict often has to hit rock bottom in order to confront it.
 

Read “It Doesn't Matter Why” by Silversun Pickups on Genius.