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Shiny Toy Guns :: "You Are The One"From We Are Pilots (Universal; 2007)
The Rapture gig was great: I got photos with the band, a copped drumstick, and Sergei -- a security guard who, on spotting my friend unfurl a white tablet (aspirin: 150mg), came over to clobber us teenage folk, surely all rich-kid X-fiends and stubby-fingered mango-brained idiots. Between being lifted off the rails and falling to the floor, we managed to show him the Anadol packet and things quickly cooled. If we were a little sore, we were at least, in our precarious sternum-busting front row position, ensured a constant supply of "fresh water" from our new friend. And, besides, that aspirin was worth the man-handling: Shiny Toy Guns supported. They sucked in ways I couldn't fully comprehend with a migraine, but ways that seem much more numerous and clear now that I've taken the time to acquire and listen to "You Are The One," the latest single from their We Are Pilots LP.
The song's like mid-career Placebo, if Brian Molko dropped the stash and took the band name to heart. There's a synth guy, a drummer, a guitarist who also sings, and a singer who, uh...well, she sings, but she's a she so there's an angle in all this. All of them do their stuff, none of it ever congeals to sound anything more than a demarcated, close-cut scheme, right down to the video, which goes for the classic rocking of the elements, as pulverising sheets of wind and rain thrust into the band, who continue knocking out the number in slo-mo. Watching the water-fetishists (no, really, the drummer started spitting at the crowd for doing the stand-still) do their thing, all fire-and-brimstone is sort of weird because I can't locate an anthem here, just anathema and an ambition for nothing more than some bubbling nu-Corgan-lite.
Alan Baban :: 8 May 2007 |
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