Review #17: We Are Scientists

We Are Scientists-With Love And Squalor
(Virgin)
7 out of 10

Picture links to W.A.S.' FREAKIN' HILARIOUS website!

We know many of you young people may have liked mall-punk (Good Charlotte, Simple Plan et al.) in middle school. That’s alright. We’re here for you. We hope many of you have found your way out of this dark crevasse in the vast tundra that is music. If you’re still stuck there, however, your first step towards rehabilitation is listening to We Are Scientists.

We Are Scientists, a sharp, witty, and hyperactive pop-punk trio hailing from New York City (like many other suave rock bands do), are the ideal transition from the mainstream into the weirder and wackier brands of rock and roll music. The lyrics are quirky, the tunes are catchy, and the instrumentation is simple and inoffensive.

Their debut album, With Love And Squalor, is a set of earwig pop tunes arranged with the utmost of affability and brevity in mind. In today’s music scene, it’s hard to find a band having more fun with the verse-chorus-verse-guitar solo-chorus format of pop music than in this album.

W.A.S. is at its best when they put as much energy into their songs as they do hamming it up in their music videos. “Inaction”, a slice of snappy contemporary punk rock, uses blaring, fuzzy bass to accentuate the panic in vocalist Keith Murray’s voice. The guitar and bass meld together for the chorus in what becomes a testament to the ferocity of laziness.
The band gets a little less garage-punk and a little more Franz Ferdinand on the album’s opener/lead single “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt”. Guitars rotate and whirl as Murray plays the role of either doppelganger, subservient lover, or both. The bulk of the album possesses certain slapstick underneath a guise of conventional pop. “The Scene Is Dead” and “Can’t Lose” are songs about parties that echo Jimmy Eat World’s uptempo stuff, and “The Great Escape” sounds like…you guessed it…an escape that’s pretty darn great. The most contemplative song on the album, the down tempo “Textbook”, is intended to convey irony and similar quasi-emotional things in a more somber tone, but you can still tell the band is struggling to keep a straight face. These overtones by no means make the songs particularly bad, they just dig the band into a hole where it would be quite difficult to tug at any heartstrings anytime soon.
Nonetheless, W.A.S. definitely has the capacity to be a really goofy and fun band. Their biggest hurdle is the fact that it seems the three of them can only play 3 instruments collectively. Until they can broaden their sonic horizons, We Are Scientists will remain the cult favorite built for the masses.

Key Tracks: “Inaction”, “The Scene Is Dead”, “The Great Escape”