We Are Scientists

When one resorts to reading a manual on relationship advice, there can only be three explanations: (a) a pressing need for laughs; (b) a depressing mark of being unmistakably desperate; and (c) it's We Are Scientists' new record, Barbara . The album booklet for Barbara is bassist Chris Cain's concoction - a series of entertaining, hilarious, and insightful messages on the 'Rules of Romance'. But how reliable, it's put to singer/guitarist Keith Murray, is Cain when it comes to giving relationship advice?
 
"Well, you know," Murray giggles, "I've always found that whether or not someone has the experiential backup to be giving advice, the ability to digest the human experience - to sort of be like a great sociologist and deliver a mandate regardless of their personal emotional situation - is sort of what makes a great therapist... like being totally divorced from oneself," expresses the frontman, rather profoundly in light of the subject matter. "I think that's what he is - I don't think it's just that he's one of the world's most celebrated Casanovas...he also has the mind for it."
 
Murray may be the lyricist behind We Are Scientists, but Cain undoubtedly has his own way with words, as reaffirmed by Barbara's album booklet. Murray and Cain have garnered a worthy reputation as quirky yet charmed purveyors of infectious punk-infused garage-pop. Since last speaking with Murray for the Brooklyn-based band's previous album, Brain Thrust Mastery, he and Cain have recruited former Razorlight drummer, Andy Burrows, for the third album (their fourth album if you include 2002's Safety, Fun, And Learning (In That Order)). Murray had met the drummer socially before having even heard Razorlight's music.
 
"He's sort of the guy that's immediately genial and very easy to become enamoured with," says Murray in his appraisal of Burrows. "I ran into him maybe January or February of 2009 - when his band was playing in New York City - and he and I just spent an evening hanging out in a hotel bar, just chatting and I mentioned the fact that we were considering having multiple drummers play on our forthcoming record, which we hadn't even begun writing yet. So I pitched that idea to him and he seemed enthusiastic about it."
 
About a month later, Burrows had quit Razorlight and contacted Murray. "He immediately called us up and said 'hey, look here's the deal - I'm no longer in a band and I would really love to make the entire record with you', which was obviously a totally different direction from the one that we had initially devised for the recording," asserts Murray. "But we immediately got really excited about the idea of this record being three guys as a band making a record together and having We Are Scientists be Keith, Chris and Andy.
 
"We started hanging out with him more and more before we even started working with him, and he moved out to New York City for the summer and really quickly became one of our best friends apart from the fact that we were intending to work on a record together. So it was pretty funny that it wasn't the most natural arrangement, but it sort of ended up feeling far more natural than any arrangement we've had so far. So we definitely feel like this is the version of We Are Scientists that feels the most in equilibrium with all members."
 
Murray and Cain have also chosen Youth Group's Danny Allen to play drums in their touring line-up. "That was also sort of a very, very similar situation," Murray enthuses. "I had met Danny through a mutual friend in New York City who had been Youth Group's guitar tech while they had been on tour in the United States. When Youth Group finished touring in the US, I think every other member but Danny went back to Australia and he had fallen in love with New York and wanted to stick around for a little while. He and I just met through this mutual friend and started hanging out all the time, and sort of like Andy - Danny is just one of those characters that seems to be friends with every single living human that has interacted with him.
 
"We immediately fell in love with Danny," Murray reiterates, "and when we realised that Andy couldn't really do all the touring this summer - because through a curse of fate he's got his solo album coming out within weeks of our record - Danny was the first person that we actually thought of to join, and at that point I don't think I had even heard him drum. I just knew that he was, you know, celebrated as a drummer and that he was the guy that I would want to hang out with 24 hours a day if possible. He's just become one of our closest friends in New York City, so he was the first person we thought of just to travel around the world with as a friend."
 
With Barbara recalling more of the stripped-down sound of their debut, was there a yearning to write in that primal and urgent pop direction? "Yeah, I mean I feel like our last record was perhaps in response to the first record - we sort of felt like we wanted to really sit down and craft some songs to be listened to on a record whereas the first album was written especially to be played live," considers Murray. "So I think after touring on our second record for two years, the fatigue on that style of song-writing began to settle in and suddenly we wanted to write the complete opposite again. 'Urgency' is sort of a good word for it - I think we definitely wanted to write a record that three guys could just walk on-stage and immediately bang out all the songs on the record, and have it be as powerful and immediately gratifying and appealing as possible. So that was sort of the basic idea - it wasn't really so much of a plan as I think a natural response to touring for two years on the last record."
 
Barbara 's first single, Rules Don't Stop, is a defining song for We Are Scientists and one that's fittingly accompanied by an innovative video. " Rules Don't Stop was the first song that was written for the record and most of the record was written in Athens, Georgia," Murray explains. "I moved down to Georgia for the summer to get out of New York City and focus on writing. Rules Don't Stop was one of the few songs that was actually started while I was living in New York City, and I think it kind of set the tone for the way that I ended up writing, because it's by far not only the shortest song on the record, but the shortest song we've ever written. It moves at a break-neck pace but also sort of incorporates a lot of different movements - apart from the choruses, the song never really does the same thing twice.
 
"I think it was actually a really good sort of inspiring watching point for the record, because the song came out fully formed and structurally complex but felt very, very simple," Murray continues in his typically zestful manner. "And I think that set the parameters for the way the album was written. It was sort of written because I'd purchased this polyphonic octave generator with a pedal that creates these dissonant octaves of the guitar, and I'd been experimenting with it and came up with the guitar parts that give the song that delayed effect, like an organ is playing. That sort of became a manic sound for the record as well; that effect appears on a lot of the songs on the record. I do think that part of the enjoyment for us is always having it be something we've never done before, and that almost makes us feel slightly uncomfortable because we've never done it."


WE ARE SCIENTISTS play a co-headline show at Billboard The Venue with Ash on August 4. Tickets from ticketek.com.au, billboardthevenue.com.au and Polyester Records city and Fitzroy. We Are Scientists brand new album Barbara is out now through Liberator.