Shiny Toy Guns

Season Of Poison

[3/5]

If synth-rock unit Shiny Toy Guns sound like a slightly different band on their sophomore effort, there’s a good reason for it: Vocalist Carah Faye Charnow-an integral part of the band’s 2006 debut, We Are Pilots-left the group this summer. New vocalist Sisely Treasure isn’t a stranger to the L.A. quartet (she was their original choice for a female voice when the band started), but Season Of Poison reveals Shiny Toy Guns are adjusting to their new lineup.

The linear electro-glam and fluid new-wave hooks found on Pilots are de-emphasized-a curious choice, since the goths-in-space epic “Frozen Oceans” and New Order-ish soft-rocker “Turned To Real Life” are two of Poison’s best songs. Instead, futuristic experimentation and subtle atmospherics (funereal organ, digital bleeps, twitching samples) merge with razor-sharp guitars and aggressive gothtronica. The eight-minute space-prog epic “Poison” compares favorably to Coheed And Cambria, both in nerd cred and use of sci-fi keyboards, while the industrial-tinged lead single “Ricochet!” sounds like Goldfrapp cozying up to Marilyn Manson. Less successful is “Ghost Town,” a sassy but irritating cheerleader-chant echo of “Footloose.” Several other tunes venture too close to the cheesy excess of ’80s pop-metal. Still, Poison excels at using retro flourishes without drowning in nostalgia or irony, and it never forgets the future is brightest. (UNIVERSAL/MOTOWN) Annie Zaleski

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IN-STORE SESSION WITH BASSIST/KEYBOARDIST JEREMY DAWSON

What’s the biggest difference working with new vocalist Sisely Treasure?

She has many voices. Carah [Faye Charnow], our former singer, she has many voices, too. I never compare the girls, they’re both very close friends of mine and they’re two different women. Sis sort of leans a little more toward the Joan Jett, while Carah leaned more toward the Sarah McLachlan. But both of them are capable of singing the other, if that makes sense.

Like Treasure’s mellow vocals on “Turned To Real Life.”

“Turned To Real Life” is a Shiny Toy Guns song from pre-Carah. It was written in early ’03, if not late ’02. It was written before Shiny Toy Guns even existed. It made it onto an early version of We Are Pilots. It was so strikingly ’80s that we kind of yanked it and stopped playing it. It was like, “Hi, my name is ‘I’m an ’80s song.’” In 2002, there was a backlash against that, it was real tough to be synthetic. [But] there’s this little pop innocence to it. For the 16th time, we tried to re-record it, [and] this time we were able to pull it off. We took less of a Peter Schilling [approach] and more of a Joy Division [approach]. It’s not so big and fluffy, it’s more melancholy and Manchesterish.

It seems like there were different influences from song to song.

That’s what we’re worried about; it goes all over the place. But so does my brain-so does [guitarist/vocalist] Chad [Petree]’s brain, so does your brain, so do the iPods of Americans. Let’s take the average young music listener. [For him or her,] there’s no more line [between] punk, rap, rock, country, pop, hip-hop. You can listen to all of these artists, they’re all in your playlist and your top 10 most-played songs. And you may have a pink Mohawk, but you may also like Hannah Montana. Why should we continue to make records where every song-good or bad-sounds exactly the same? In the case of my band, we’re capable of moving around, so why not do it? It might not be the most marketable idea in the world, but we’re not making toys, we’re making records.

The record actually reminded me a lot of Saosin.

They have a song called “You’re Not Alone.” We were listening to it over and over again in the studio while we were making our record, to be honest, trying to figure out how they got it to be so huge. It’s a big sponge, it absorbs every frequency in the chorus. We love anything that’s big and epic. [AZ]