Swoon is the second full-length studio album by Los Angeles alternative rock band Silversun Pickups, released through Dangerbird Records on 14 April 2009. The name of the album comes from a line in the outro of the first track "There's No Secrets This Year."
After completing their Carnavas/Pikul tour in Christmas 2007, the band took a break until February of the next year. They began recording in their own studio named The Dark. The album was produced by Dave Cooley, who had worked with the band on their first album, Carnavas. Recording was completed between July 2008 and February 2009. During the recording process the band laid down as many as 17 songs which were eventually cut down to 10 for the album. On February 17, the band posted a list of the songs expected to be on Swoon on their MySpace blog.[3]
The album was released on April 14, 2009. The first single released was "Panic Switch".[4] On April 6, the track "There's No Secrets This Year" was released as a single on various online music stores. The bonus track "Currency of Love" was released exclusively on iTunes with pre-orders in the U.S. and Canada, but was issued as a regular album track in other countries. The song "Ne Plus Ultra" was released as a B-Side on the single Panic Switch.
Two tracks off of the album, "Panic Switch" and "It's Nice to Know You Work Alone," have been released as downloadable content for Guitar Hero: World Tour as part of a track pack released on April 9.[5] The song "Panic Switch" was also released along with "Sort Of" for the Rock Band series on March 2, 2010. "Panic Switch" was also included with the game Rocksmith. "There's No Secrets This Year" appears in racing game Dirt 2 and the rhythm game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. "It's Nice to Know You Work Alone" is also featured in the baseball game MLB 10: The Show.
As with Carnavas, the album's packaging features the artwork of Darren Waterston, this time using his 2008 piece "St.Clair" as the basis for the cover art.[6] The inside packing also features Waterston's pieces "Disembodiment" and "Reverberations." All paintings are from his collection entitled "The Flowering."
Like Carnavas, Swoon received generally positive reviews from critics. It accumulated a score of 64 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 21 reviews.[18] The album reached the seventh spot on the Billboard 200 with 43,000 copies sold in its first week, compared to "Carnavas", which peaked only at number 80 on the Billboard 200. As of May 2012, Swoon has sold 318,000 copies [19]
[34][35]
Songs do eventually get change position in the setlist. For example, "Catch and Release" from the encore to the normal setlist, with "Three Seed" taking their place in the encore.
^Griffiths, Mark (March 2010), "Silversun Pickups: Swoon (Dangerbird). LA four-piece deliver stunning second album", Kerrang!, no. 1250, p. 49, ISSN1740-9977