Ah, amiable West Coast indie rock. In the past year, the California region has produced its fair share of seemingly effortless, vaguely generic pop, ranging in quality from pretty good (Dios) to pretty damn good (Rogue Wave). The spectrum for potential success within the regional genre is limited, though, precisely because of the inherently amicable nature of the music itself. Accordingly, it's nearly impossible to seriously knock an album like Poison Arrows, whose utterly harmless brand of rock is so airtight in its calculated construction that even the inevitable half-hearted smile and head-nod is justification enough for the album's existence.
Communiqué formally departed from their CA-based punk roots (as American Steel) last year, when the keyboard-intensive pop sound of their 2003 EP A Crescent Honeymoon garnered some attention from MTV and a few high-profile music publications. The addition of a keyboardist, Cory Gowan, didn't exactly support lead singer/guitarist Rory Henderson's conception of the group as "punk," but enabled the band to openly embrace a pop aesthetic at odds with the tone of their previous work. Poison Arrows is the fruition of the band's new direction, but the results, while intermittently catchy, are largely unremarkable.
The album opens with "The Best Lies", which, with its buzzing synth bassline and indistinct, treble-heavy guitar muddle, turns on a dime from Cure-on-Zoloft verses to positively textbook pop choruses-- even the lyrics ("All the best lies are sealed with a kiss") are suspiciously inoffensive. "Evaporate" is driven by a cheesy organ progression and weak new-wave dance beat, leading to a chorus nearly identical to that of the first track; unimaginative repetition, particularly in choruses, is the group's most consistent offense. "Dagger Vision" is one of many songs to employ a recently ubiquitous stock Cars synthline.
"Perfect Weapon" drips with imitative disco-pop affectation, "Strays" effectively streamlines The Shins' unique brand of ambiguous 60s quotation, and "Death Rattle Dance" is a spirited, straightforward rock number, though lyrics like, "I wanna scream and shout/ Let it all out," cut a bit close to teen movie soundtrack material. At some point during the unassuming closing ballad, "Rattling Bones", a distinct numbness sets in as the faint memories of every other song on the album slowly dissipate. Poison Arrows is the very definition of pleasantly forgettable: For further proof, one need only reference Rolling Stone, who, perhaps portentously, have labeled Communiqué's music "rock at its finest."
Well, no. But again, how negative can one's attitude be toward this stuff? Communiqué straddles the retro-crazed Shins vs. Strokes divide so successfully that their sound is practically anonymous. Paradoxically, by pandering to every conceivably fashionable contemporary musical trend, the band transcends universal accessibility and becomes something of a non-entity. There's literally nothing that distinguishes this music from anything that a plethora of other marginally credible aspiring mainstream artists have to offer. Still, Poison Arrows retains a certain chameleonic charm. Generally agreeable and eager to please, Communiqué make a concerted effort to push no boundaries, offer no hidden pleasures, and suggest little potential for future musical development. Which is to say, of course, that they should do just fine.
