Shiny Toy Guns – When Did This Storm Begin? (Season of Poison, 2008)
written by matt
The nearly minute-long intro for this track sort of makes sense to me – it’s like a bridge from the previous album ‘We Are Pilots’ to this next one. The staccato bass line is joined by occasional bursts of vocal samples and spacey synth sound effects until a short burst of kicks at 1:09 heralds the arrival of the Muse-esque male vocals: ”Call my name, answer me where I stand.”
In the background of this plea, trance pads warm up, until – boom! angry female vocals at 1:34!
Here’s a story of the way I wasn’t meant to be raised,
bright yellow sun that fades away to black and blue every place
There’s a bottle in the shape of your love for me
A little more reasonably, she continues: “Now the clouds are racing higher, blinding arrows away. There’s in darkness off the streets that my electricitay,” before getting angry again:
Gold ( or God?) shatters the sky,
this is the first day of the rest of our lives,
’cause no one really lives or dies.
You can’t help getting caught up in the epic 3/3/2 drum line, the heavy pads and guitar, and the reverbed vocals – the next few minutes go by quickly, droning requests to “call my name, where I stand” are interrupted only once more by the angry girl from before:
Every night you drink the money left to pay all the bills.
No room for us, but there’s another fucking bottle of pills.
Here’s your trophy on my face, it’s just an eye anyway..Now the clouds are racing higher, blinding arrows away.
There’s in darkness off the streets that my elec-tricityThis will go no further, I swear it dies today.
Your nights will stay forever if you dare once more touch me.
The ‘plot’ is fairly familiar – a girl with an abusive alcoholic of a lover/father finally getting the balls to stand up for herself. But the lyrics go so well with the vocal style, and the whole thing works incredibly well as an introduction to Shiny Toy Gun’s new musical direction on their new album. The track ends with a school bell, but it’s only there to set up the next song. Unfortunately the majority of the other tracks don’t live up to the expectations that this one suggests, with the exception of ‘Ghost Town’, and possibly ‘Ricochet’, both of which are in the same vein.