Shiny Toy Guns - Chemistry of a Car Crash

A symptom of the information age; it seems that every successful band today has a MySpace, often run by a faceless record company and forever updated with new tour dates and opportunities to purchase every kind of merchandise.

Not the case, it seems, with Shiny Toy Guns. The LA based electro rock quartet say they personally embrace their following, respond to comments and embark on whichever small town their fans ask them to play. The Skinny caught up with founding member Jeremy Dawson backstage at Cabaret Voltaire on the fifth night of their UK tour, just shy of their debut album's UK release.

Skinny: Most foreign acts only play up to five shows in the UK, you're playing 40. Why the attention to obscure little towns? Jeremy: "Well these obscure little towns are full of thousands of people who like music. Just because it's not Leeds or Manchester doesn't mean that they shouldn't have bands come through them too."

S: Is the reaction there as good as you receive in the larger cities?
JD: "Even more so. Most of them have to get a train to see a band or they can't afford to go see any bands so it makes them feel extra special. Especially after the gig they'll take us out to their favourite pub or where their friends are."

S: Don't the regular inhabitants get scared of the STG experience
JD: "Oh yeah, all the regular people who come in to get a beer and there's a band playing weird music... it's all these Irish guys drinking Guinness and we trample through there and it's all this [Gruff mumbling voice] 'Ho herr muttering' but that's to be expected. I got in one bit of trouble with an IRA guy over Blair and Bush, he was mashed out of his mind."

S: But, what do you think of these politics? They aren't addressed in STG songs...
JD: "No. We do music, we have our own personal opinions but we'd rather people just learn and be educated enough to make their own decision on what they want to do and believe."

S: Do your fans ever ask on MySpace or e-mail you about it?
JD: "That's the thing! That's why we don't address these political issues. The fans care, but that's not why they're talking to us. It's on the news, it's in the papers, there's one place they can go to and not deal with that or with the other things that are annoying and that's through music and on their computers. Music's an escapist thing; you don't have to deal with that today. You can listen to tunes or write a song instead."

S: What do people e-mail you about?
JD: "Sometimes it's like, 'What time do you go on tomorrow' or 'I don't know how to find the address' or 'I wanna know what you meant with this lyric' or a lot of the times it's 'I don't really like myself at all and I don't have any friends and I don't have anyone to talk to.' They get bummed out and they turn to music. And then, well, we're not psychologists but we can sit there and have a conversation with people. They feel they can communicate directly with any band and when the band responds they're like 'Woah!'."

S: Doesn't that destroy the mystique of a band?
JD: "The mystery is taken up in the music, the songs and the performance. All that stuff still holds mystery. But if we were completely immortal or an untouchable, unspeakable band... that'd just be like almost every other band in the world."

S: Speaking of immortals, what was it like going on the famous Late Show with David Letterman?
JD: "Scary."

S: "Was he a nice guy?

JD: Totally.

S: "Did he outwit you?"

JD: "Absolutely! [laughs] He was nice to us, I heard he only messes with you if he's a little perturbed by you. We weren't supposed to go on but they pushed it through early. You usually start with Carson Daly and months later work your way up to Letterman but we got three days notice. It was cool but the scary thing wasn't actually playing the show or David but these camera cranes going by. You look into the iris of that lens and there are 27 million people on the other side, that's crazy."