We Are Scientists Official Site
We Are Scientists @ MySpace
The Inside Pulse:
Guitar and Lead Vocals: Keith Murray
Bass Guitar/Vocals: Chris Cain
Drums/Vocals: Michael Tapper
One of the New York-based pop-punk groups that had appeared to vanish, We Are Scientists re-emerge with an effort that people are talking about. With Love and Squalor, the trio’s debut LP, is a dance-punk/post-punk lover’s delight. We Are Scientists sound directly influenced by a million acts that they have toured with, and as a result, their first record sounds as though they borrowed a track from each of those groups and tossed them together to form a cohesive, yet muddled affair. The groovy bass and crashing cymbals hypnotize the listener into thinking that their sound is refreshing and new, however, it’s just a retread of a slowly dying trend. If you are a fan of the Killers, the White Stripes, the Strokes, the Hives, or any of the other bands that helped to perfect a sound that has been bastardized, this is the album for you.
With Love and Squalor aims for the jugular, but ends up stabbing you in the face.
Positives: The lead guitar is hooky, the choruses are short and rushed, but the driving disco beats will provide you with shameless motivation to dance. If that is your sort of thing, this is your sort of album. “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt,” “The Great Escape,” and “This Scene is Dead” are three very different songs with similar senses of urgency. The moment we have with each piece is brief, and before too long, we are launched back into danceable mediocrity.
Negatives: Murray never decides whether he’s a crooning Brit (Morrissey) or a neurotic, Woody Allen-esque front man. We Are Scientists subscribe to the school of “Rock by Numbers”: if it worked before for others, it must work for us! They say nothing new and have written an album that smells familiar in a musty-and-old sort of way, using the methods laid down by the bands that struggled to gain notoriety before them.
Cross-breed: Bloc Party, Hot Hot Heat and any other dance-punk/pop-punk band that wears suits onstage (the Hives, the Killers).
Reason to buy: You want to dance whilst you rock, but don’t mind the fact that you might already have 3 or 4 other albums in your collection that sound exactly like this, only better.
