Silversun Pickups members Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert take you on a tour of their musical minds in this intimate interview with The Point’s Donny Fandango. From the magic of the weird egg-shaped elevators at the St. Louis Arch and walking around at night listening to a Radiohead album to the thrill of collaborating with fellow artists like Laura Jane Grace from Against Me!, this is an interview that transcends the ordinary. Discover the story behind Silversun Pickups’ cover of Martika’s “Toy Soldiers” and get a peek into their tight-knit production circle. It’s a chat filled with laughter, memories, and the kind of music talk that @silversunpickups fans dream of. Don’t just listen to the music—experience the stories behind it.
Don’t miss Silversun Pickups LIVE in St. Louis at The Hawthorn on Thursday, April 25th. Get details on the Iron Age Concert Calendar.
See the full transcript below:
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Hello. How are you?
Donny (105.7 The Point): How you guys doing?
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): here, Brian got this going on right now. We’re just on our phone, so I hope that’s okay.
Donny (105.7 The Point): No, that’s fine. That’s fine. You guys look great. I wasn’t exactly sure what Brian was doing there initially. I don’t know why I thought there was.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): I am, also not sure.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Okay, if you put it down, I.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Can say that for some reason it’s evoking something and I don’t know what.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Question.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Also, we’ve only toured, really, the second day of tour and I think I’ve already lost my mind.
Donny (105.7 The Point): I mean, normally that happens much later, Brian, so that’s probably not great news. Maybe. I don’t know.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): I don’t know. It depends on how you look at it. Might be good for the audience.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Well, Nikki and Brian, thank you so much.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Did not expect this.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): No, I didn’t expect.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): What about.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): We’ll see how long I can hold up the camera, for.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Well, I won’t keep you so long. So then that way your arms don’t. Because I would think it would not take very long.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Let me take care of this.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Well, it’s wonderful to have you, Nikki. and Brian, we’ll see you in St. Louis on Thursday. You’re playing a show for us at the Hawthorne and we’re really excited about this. And I don’t, I don’t know why I. This is one of the first things that popped into my mind when I knew I was talking to you guys. But I’m not sure why. I feel as though this band, your band, would enjoy going to the arch. Have you been to the arch when you’ve been in St. Louis?
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Several times.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Oh, several times. Okay. Because it just seems like something if you hadn’t done, I would suggest, because you seem like the kind of folks that would enjoy that.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): So good or sweet.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): We’ve been there a few times. I think my favorite part is that elevate. Yeah, that sort of like a James Bond little egg elevator.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Sure.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Go in there like. All right, mister Bolton, see you up there. it’s pretty cool. The arch is really cool. I’ve seen that thing so many times. One of my favorite memories in St. Louis, we have a lot of them, actually, but one I remember is that Radiohead, the last record came out, man shaped pool, I think, or moon shaped pool. And we all were at a bar somewhere and I remember thinking, I just really want to listen to it. And the hotel was about an hour and a half away. And I just, it was like one in the morning. I just said, I just did the french exit and ducked out and put my headphones in and just walked through St. Louis listening to Radiohead, and it was so beautiful and so fun.
Donny (105.7 The Point): That’s fantastic.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): And now he’s going to listen to the new Taylor Swift album today since, when we get to sing.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Well, I think I am going to because I’m near you. Yeah, I don’t think I have a.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Choice, but whatever I, I hear, that’s really good.
Donny (105.7 The Point): I just like how people are so excited about it. Like, I, I just like how people get excited about things musically in general. But, like, then it starts to make me sort of feel a little bad because, like, I just listen to the albums and don’t dissect every lyric and is that okay too? You know what I mean?
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Of course.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): I mean, yeah, it’s just music, you know, you just listen to music as you, as you listen to it.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Taylor’s open to all her fans, however you want to digest it.
Laura Jane Grace joined you guys on stage for a show in Chicago
Donny (105.7 The Point): A, couple of months ago, it might have even been more than a couple of months ago at this .1 of my very favorite artists, and I’ve never had the chance to meet her yet, but one of my very favorite artists joined you guys, on stage for a show or for part of a show in Chicago. And that was lauren james grace. And can you kind of talk about her? I feel like she is like one of our. I just think that she is such a great songwriter, and I know those of us that know her appreciate her a lot, but I feel like she does not get the credit that she deserves. So when I see her on stage with you guys, I go, ah, good, good. More people to see how great she is.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Yes.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): She’s so, powerful. Her voice is so powerful.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): We toured with her. We took against me out on tour a long time ago, and we, we became very friendly. And then it’s just time happens, and once in a while, we’d have a little bit of an exchange, but our friendship was always there, but we just hadn’t connected in any way.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): We’ve rekindled every single day.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): And Nikki and I did a benefit, with Butch vig. Butch does a, thing called Joey song in Madison every January with a bunch of artists, and we’re part of it. And Laura was one of the people, and so we reconnected with her and we played each other’s music and this acoustic thing, she played our songs. We played her song thrash and real, which we got emotionally attached to. And then we met her wife, Paris, who’s really, really quite something. She’s special. And when we were playing Chicago, we just threw it out to her. Like, wow, we had so much fun. You want to come and do this? And she was a little taken back. First, she was like, really? I was like, yeah, you and Paris, your wife can do this. And so, much fun. Immediately, she was just, like, 100%.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Oh, that’s so awesome.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): It was amazing. The performance was so much fun. And honestly, we just had so much fun hanging out with her in Paris the whole night. I can take over.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Uh-huh. For a little.
Donny (105.7 The Point): You guys are going back and forth. That’s teamwork is what that is.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): He worked on seamwork.
Donny (105.7 The Point): See, she brought our Laura bought one of Jeff Tweedy’s old studios here in St. Louis and was living.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Yes, I know that. Yeah.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Half the time here. So I was just praying, like, I would tell my wife, okay, tonight’s gonna be the night that I’m just gonna run into Laura Jane Grace and just get to m. But I, unfortunately, haven’t had that opportunity. But like I said, I was just so excited to see her join you on stage and with Paris as well, because I think at that point, she had just gotten married, probably, right?
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Think so?
Donny (105.7 The Point): Yeah, right around that time.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): So fresh.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Yeah, it seemed pretty fresh when in Madison, Wisconsin. But she. Yeah. she’s. She’s really lovely person. She’s really shy, which is hard for people to understand when somebody just has.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Because our stage presence is the presence.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): And her voice is so big, but, you know, she’s. She’s reserved and charming and saves it for the stage.
You guys covered the martika song, toy soldiers a few years ago
Donny (105.7 The Point): Kevin, I want to go back. I want to ask you, you mentioned Butch Viga a minute or two ago, and, I know that this isn’t new or anything, but when you guys, a few years ago, covered the martika song, toy soldiers, I had kind of forgotten about that song, and that was a song that I remember desperately trying to record off the radio when I was a kid playing record. What led you to that? To that song, which obviously has a beautiful meaning behind it, which I didn’t know about, but it’s just such a good song.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): I didn’t know about that meaning either, to be honest. I was just randomly talking. I was in New York, and our manager, Cliff Bernstein, was with me with a couple of people, and we were all just talking about songs in a certain era, like a 1987 specific era, like a lion in the cobra, sinead O’Connor kind of era, this, like, certain pop sound that’s really, like, sizzly, but also a little bit like, glam rock. Like, his hair metal a little bit.
Donny (105.7 The Point): M. I don’t know.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): It’s just really interesting. You know what I mean? Yeah. And we’re just talking about these great songs that we don’t really hear that much. And I I have always mentioned that I love toy soldiers. As years have gone on, that one always still creeps in. Like, it gives me the willy still. And Cliff Ernstein randomly said that song before I had a chance to say it, and I said, no way. I was really thinking about that as well. And then he just said, you should really cover that. And I thought, no way. We don’t really do covers. And I think that would be strange. But then, it just kind of seemed like a challenge. Like, could we do that? And then the pandemic happened, and it’s like, okay, we should do something fun, you know, we should release this. And. And then Martika was on board, and. And that was important to me, that Martika was on board. She was gonna come play a show with us, but something happened. She couldn’t do it, but hopefully someday. My favorite thing was when we wrote her, we’re like, hey, you know, we changed the key of the song. Are you cool with that? She’s like, I got it. Don’t worry. I got all the keys. I know. I know all the keys.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): She’s professional.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): He’s a professional. It was hard for me. I tried to keep the key, and I was like, I can’t compete with, like, a 17 year old girl. I might be able to a little. I’m probably more of the dudes out there in music. The closest I could, but it’s hard.
You guys have been around, um, for a while now
Donny (105.7 The Point): You know, you guys have been around, for a while now, and, you know, in reading bits and pieces of interviews and things, I get the general sense that you’ve got a small circle of folks around you, and you keep it that way on purpose, and you’re able to kind of do what you want and what you feel. is that something that you had to kind of work towards over the years, or did it kind of start that way and you’ve been, you know, just sort of keeping that way the whole time?
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): I don’t think we’re really conscious of it, but we, like working with the people that we’re with, so if they’ll stay with us, then we’re happy to have them, and they’re our good friends. So, yeah, I would say it all happened organically. It’s not something we had to fight for or think about. It’s just what happened.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Well, one of the people that. The people that we like and we work with and we work well together, we’re just always been in a. We’ve never been a band that would be good in a committee ever. And, we give that vibe off pretty quick. And so we’ve always worked with either labels that are tiny, that have really no input from us and leave us alone or our own thing. And we have our management people that also just kind of get that. And then the people that we work with are producers like Butch or Jack Knife or Dave Cooley or Rod. Just thinking about Rod.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Yeah.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): I was just thinking about Rod because we were listening to the rentals album, last night.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Oh, cool. Rod Cervera.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Rod Cervera, who was in the rentals, and he produced first record, the return of the rentals.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): So good.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): It’s so good. Matt Sharp.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Yeah, well, it’s really great. And I don’t know why that this is important for me to interrupt you and say right now, but I have to do it anyway as a music nerd. But on that second rentals album, there is a song called getting by that is, to me, like, this freaking totally forgotten alt rock gym that not everyone knows about that they should. It’s so brilliant.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): But that’s great. The second record doesn’t get a lot of because that’s when he took off and went to Barcelona and it was heated on his own. Yeah, the band wasn’t around at that point. It’s just Matt. Yeah, but I think he had Maya Rudolph. Maya Rudolph’s not on the record, but she toured with them and I don’t know, it’s Petra hater.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Did you just give us a thumbs up or did some.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Somebody did.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): It was not me. Yeah, make a heart.
Donny (105.7 The Point): That’s probably somebody telling me that I need to wrap it up, is what.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): My guess is if you make a heart on the new iPhones, it might do a, heart. Do a heart.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Like m an anime thing.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Yeah, but make it so we can see.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Isn’t this the, What’s your name?
Donny (105.7 The Point): It’s doing it.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Amazing.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Where? No, you didn’t.
Donny (105.7 The Point): Yeah. Do it again.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): Make it look like a heart, though.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): Okay. What if I do, like, an old school?
Donny (105.7 The Point): There it is.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): okay.
Brian Aubert (Silversun Pickups): You’re welcome, world. Okay.
Donny (105.7 The Point): I don’t. I don’t think there could have been a better way for us to end this interview. I thank you guys. Ah, it’s perfect. It’s perfect. And we cannot wait to see you on Thursday night. Nikki and Brian, thank you so, so much for your time. Looking forward to it. All right. Thank you, guys.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): All right, bye.
Donny (105.7 The Point): All right, bye bye.
Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups): See you.