Cobra Starship

TORONTO - Slightly after two o'clock on a recent February afternoon, Cobra Starship mastermind and frontman Gabe Saporta thinks long and hard when he's asked how his new band plans on topping Fall Out Boy, +44 and the Academy Is... when they join the Honda Civic Tour this April.

"Seriously? Amazing dance moves," he says via cell on route to Dallas' Gypsy Tearoom. "I've been working on them. In all honesty, I have my own version of the Crip Walk.

"We'll cut some rug on their ass."

Dreamt up after Saporta's lead-vocal gig with New Jersey-based punk rockers Midtown fizzled out after 2004's "Forget What You Know," Saporta has offered up a variety of reasons for diving into the same emo-flavoured water as Panic! At the Disco and Fall Out Boy.

"I had gone out to the desert to meditate and contemplate the universe and then I had this epiphany and in this epiphany a cobra came out of nowhere and bit me in the neck," he offers up seriously.

"I started hallucinating and was on the verge of dying, but when I finally came-to, the cobra was there and he told me he'd been sent from the future to teach me how to dance and how to make beats.

"So, we spent a couple of weeks out there working on dance moves and making beats and then he told me to go back home and start Cobra Starship in honour of the spacecraft that brought him back from the future to find me."

After his experience in the desert, Saporta, 27, ditched the guitar and vocal method he'd used to come up with songs for Midtown. His first song? A beat-laden answer to Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" aptly titled "Hollaback Boy."

"I did that to figure out if I could sing that type of song, which was different from anything I'd done with Midtown.

"But I'm not only parodying that song, I'm paying homage to it 'cause I think the track is f***ing sick," he explains. "How (Stefani) amalgamated different styles on that record is what I want to do. I want to make music that combines elements of all the different types of music I listen to. Not just the punk rock stuff."

"Hollaback Boy" a hit on MySpace, Saporta was thinking of ways to stretch his dance-y, emo pop sounds when he heard about a movie called "Snakes on a Plane."

"What ended up happening was, the Academy Is... heard about 'Snakes on a Plane' 'cause Adam Siska, their bass player, is a big Internet geek. He knew about the movie before it was even finished and was like, 'Yo, I don't know what this movie is, but there's going to be snakes on a plane and that's going to be amazing.'

"Our manager got in touch with the film's producers and we took one of the songs we already had, wrote a new chorus and made it work for the movie."

"Bring It (Snakes on a Plane)," which features William Beckett from the Academy Is..., Gym Class Heroes' Travis McCoy and the Sounds' Maja Ivarsson, became a staple on MTV thanks to a goofy, star-studded video that featured Saporta trying to smuggle, you guessed it, snakes on a plane.

The film's future still bright, courtesy of an obsessive marketing campaign that ultimately flopped, Saporta, signed to Fall Out Boy Paul Wentz's Decaydance Records and Florida-based Fueled by Ramen, holed up in L.A.'s Ballroom Studios to bang out the other 10 tracks that make up Cobra Starship's recently-released debut, "While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets."

A poppy pastiche of punk-techno songs with Morrissey-like song titles, such as "Being from Jersey Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry," It's Amateur Night at the Apollo Creed!" and "You Can't Be Missed if You Never Go Away," Cobra Starship trades the emo-tinged punk cabaret of label-mates Panic! At the Disco for a mix of guitar-heavy synthpop that goofily plays up Saporta's frat-boy charm.

Certainly one of the most hedonistic of his musical peers, joined by Nate Navarro (drums), Elisa Schwartz (keytar) and Ivy League's Ryland Blackinton (guitar) and Alex Suarez (bass), Saporta pens new-wavy kissing game odes ("You can't escape now/ I've got you locked inside this room," he issues on "It's Warmer in the Basement") and taps '80s pop princesses the Cover Girls for the freestyle-fuelled "The Ballad of Big Poppa and Diamond Girl."

But considering Cobra Starship's big break came from a movie that flopped, one has to wonder what Saporta thinks of "Snakes on a Plane."

"It's horrendous," he laughs, "but it's amazingly horrendous.

"The dialogue is so comical at some points that it's ridiculous. But if you get the joke, you feel like you're part of a gang that no one else is a part of, which is why I think we couldn't have chosen a better movie to be a part of 'cause that's the vibe Cobra Starship strives for.

"Cobra Starship is kind of like a gang. Sure, we're kind of over-the-top and obnoxious and stuff, but we're making fun of ourselves. If you don't get the joke, you'll be like, 'Yeah, they suck.' But if you do, you might be saying, 'This is the greatest s*** ever.'"

"While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets" is in stores now.

Here are Cobra Starship's upcoming Canadian dates:

Wednesday, March 14 -- Phoenix Concert Theatre Toronto ON (w/ Cartel)

Sunday, May 6 -- P.N.E. Pacific Coliseum Vancouver BC (w/ FOB)

Friday, May 25 -- Bell Centre Montreal PQ (w/ FOB)

Saturday, May 26 -- Molson Amphitheatre Toronto ON (w/ FOB)