“The Great Escape”
from the album With Love and Squalor
2005
iTunes
Watch the video for “The Great Escape” at The Lonely Island
Today is my birthday, so I thought today’s feature should be one of my favorite bands. And so, here is We Are Scientists. They appeared here in June, and they have quickly found themselves frequently appearing on my Most Played lists.
Their full-length label debut With Love and Squalor drops later this month, and it is being streamed right now at NME’s Media section. It requires site registration, but you should be able to avoid this by using Bug Me Not.
Also, check out the band’s website, linked with the album cover above. It’s funny.
And no cats were harmed in the making of that album cover. I assume.
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Here’s a review:
The debut single “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt” opens up the album, a dark pop odyssey with an incessantly darting guitar riff that makes those dancing feet flutter. Vocalist and guitarist Keith Murray offers himself up in a truly noble gesture, drawling “My body is your body / I won’t tell anybody/ If you wanna use my body / go for it, yeah”. Crashing cymbals hammer home the verse; the drums complex rhythmical swerves and turns resonating with Dave Grohl’s helming of the drums for Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf. So, draw a deep breath and mop that brow, for herewith begins a joyous album helmed by a band that play so tight that it makes your eyes water.
A real punk attack, “Callbacks” comes over like the Fat Wreck Chords roster doing Death From Above 1979. It’s melodious, certainly humorous but, my word, does it rock, and rock you hard. Two thirds of the way through, elements of Faith No More creep in, and “Digging the Grave” comes to mind as the guitars shudder and Murray’s vocals explode into the embittered chant “And I’m so sorry to bring you down/I guess that everything is better when I’m not around”.
“This Scene is Dead” charts the refusal to admit that all good things come to an end: “Come on get gone/can’t go home the night is young / I’m blacking out but it’s been fun“. “Cash Cow” ladles on extra emotion on the lyrics and The Departure-esque drums focus on the offbeat and thrashing the hi-hat. This is certainly one to please Editors fans on the forthcoming tour, but what makes W.A.S. so much better than their dour headliners is in their humour. Never taking themselves entirely seriously, their subtle smiles dance throughout the album and bring to mind the jollities of Electric Six.
Opening all lo-fi, new single “The Great Escape” sees the guitar tripping away quietly before Chris Cain’s bass smashes through the tranquillity and mutates the track into the best indie disco song ever. As the backing harmonies build and the guitar freewheels, words spill out of Murray’s mouth jostling for space in a syllable-heavy short-on-time verse: “They’re breaking both my hands/They’re telling me to take it like a man/Take it like a man/Well fuck that.” Producing a classic guitar tune to shake your glittery eyeshadow and retro Adidas trainers to, W.A.S. have now inaugurated themselves into the indie disco-dancing hall of fame, alongside Arctic Monkeys’ “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” The Rakes’ “Retreat” and Franz Ferdinand’s “The Dark of the Matinee.” I need to wipe a tear from my eye. I’m all overcome.
“Inaction” has stuck in my head for the last seven months since seeing the band play in Leeds, and “It’s a Hit” is both one of the band’s best live and album tracks. Murray repeats the “I’ve been hit!” chorus endlessly in a giddy head rush of loveliness. Some bands are good on record but not good live (see the madness of the White Stripes at Glastonbury). Some are amazing live and hopeless on record (unfortunately for LA disco rock divas The Blood Arm). But W.A.S. can carry both the live performance and recording with panache and an intensity that simply demands your attention.
This isn’t to say that With Love and Squalor is entirely perfect. It would have certainly benefited from some trimming and the absence of the last three songs. “Textbook” is mournful and laconic with a distinctly ’80s Tears for Fears vibe –- and while the Fears are not necessarily a bad thing, “Mad World” and “Sowing the Seeds of Love” being really quite fine — this rather sloth-like number doesn’t stand up to the frankly exhausting pace of the rest of the album. “What’s the Word?” is unexceptional and penultimate track “Worth the Wait,” well, isn’t really.
Despite this, With Love and Squalor is really good new music. Like the struggle for categorisation that the Maxïmo Park album produces in even the most hardened critic, W.A.S. are similarly impossible to locate in music history. The influences are there but somehow twisted and subverted to the bands own devious ends. W.A.S. refuse to sit squarely in any hip new musical wave and instead straddle three or four genres, purely I believe, for the bands own amusement value.
While W.A.S. are certainly contemporary in their meddling with traditional song structures (a la Futureheads, O Fracas and the entire indie world), you simply can’t knock them for damn good songs with infectious punk refrains and powerful pop hooks. Started in California five years back, the band made the move to New York and self-released a plethora of EPs before the industry moneymen saw the light and — huzzah! — after two UK singles this album hits the salivating shop shelves this month. Combined with yet another tour with Editors, With Love and Squalor is certain to be the number one requested item for Christmas indie stockings come December. Or maybe that’s just a little too optimistic. I think I need a lie down.