Communique: Poison Arrows : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Oakland's Communique may play synthed-out retro-pop, full of keyboard wails and tight harmonies, but they remain, at heart, a rock band. On their full-length debut, Poison Arrows, the quartet expands on the blinding, blistery music found on its startling EP, A Crescent Honeymoon. Here, though, the songs dance a bit more, as jams like "Perfect Weapon" and "Oija Me" shake with body-moving, catchy, almost disco-like grooves. The mighty opener "The Best Lies" and the thrilling racer "Dagger Vision" boast head-nodding, sweeping choruses. The band packs armfuls of big, youthful energy into the set, as each song rips fiercer than the last. Even so, frontman and main songwriter Rory Henderson doesn't exactly tell party-friendly stories. On "Black Curses" -- and throughout -- he offers images of an outcast, "I'm bleeding down my chin, biting on my lip." Communique's music is poignant and charged, rock for the underdog.