We Are Scientists interview: 'I would like to share a drink with everyone who comes to the show'

The New York based duo managed to capture the hearts of the nation with their charm and generally bizarre sense of humour back in the noughties.

Now, over ten years on from their debut album release, the band are no less enthusiastic about their work or live performances.

We Are Scientists rode the wave of indie rock into the charts back in 2008 with their hits After Hours and Chick Lit and have stuck around ever since.

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According to guitarist and vocalist Keith Murray, it’s a mutual love of curry that keeps them coming back.

“We go curry-crazy in the UK, and you guys have tons of it.

“For whatever reason, the United States has a real dearth of good Indian restaurants.

“New York is okay, I guess, but everywhere else over here is a curry desert. The UK, by contrast, is a curry wonderland.

“So, the fact that we see eye to eye with you on the curry situation is probably emblematic of our larger sympathies.”

But it’s Glasgow the band have a real soft spot for, after an impromptu show at Bar Bloc.

“We love being in Glasgow — I do believe it’s my favourite city in the UK.

BUY TICKETS TO ‘WE ARE SCIENTISTS’ AT THE GLASGOW GARAGE – CLICK HERE. ​

“For whatever reason, we tend to have a day off there more than in any other city in the UK. We also have had a weird number of birthdays coincide with shows in Glasgow.

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“So, we’ve had a lot of great times, there. One of my favourite-ever tour moments came on the day of our last performance at T In The Park.

“We had finished our show, and were headed to Edinburgh, where we had a flight back to NYC, in the morning.

“On the drive, though, we discovered that our Glaswegian friends PAWS were playing a show at a tiny club called Bar Bloc, in Glasgow, and immediately rerouted our trip.

“We ended up not only going to the show but also playing an impromptu set of our own in this little, jam-packed club to a gang of rowdy kids. It was one of my favourite WAS shows, ever — more fun than our festival performance, earlier that day.

“I once told my wife that we should move to Glasgow - she said no but she’s never been there, so she doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

Now on their sixth studio album, the band say the process of songwriting is getting more exciting with every record.

Through changing up the process of recording and songwriting, they have managed to keep things interesting and relevant for their fans.

Keith explains: “I think we just keep getting better and better at writing music, so the process itself is only getting more exciting for me with each album.

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“I suppose that it makes sense that doing something more skilfully makes it more rewarding. We’ve also continuously changed up the process itself — on this record, Chris (Cain, bass guitar) took a bunch of my original demos and performed remixes on them as part of the songwriting process, so that straightforward guitar songs became poppier, electro-dance tunes, like One In, One Out and Heart Is A Weapon.

“Throwing a few procedural curveballs like that into the process definitely keeps things interesting.

“I don’t want to be a pretentious creep and say that 'inspiration can come from anywhere', but it’s true.

“One In, One Out started out as a song about my wife’s rule on reducing my constant influx of books into our apartment.

“Your Light Has Changed was inspired by a podcast I was listening to about hauntings and succubi.

“Properties of Perception came from fantasising about leaving New York City.

"So, I don’t know — inspiration kind of does come from anywhere, if you just try to be practised about harnessing ideas when they present themselves.”

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Over the years, they have sanded away the more obvious influences on their music to something that, they say, sounds more like themselves.

Most recent album Megaplex was recorded over a period of two and a half weeks.

“More than anything, I think we’ve just ended up sounding more like ourselves, if that makes any sense”, Keith explains.

“Our first album was heavily indebted to the NYC music scene that was exploding at the time we were writing it - you can hear the influence of bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, and The Rapture all over that thing.

“Over time, I think we’ve sanded away the more obvious influences, and the songs sound more like, well, songs, rather than examples of a specific genre.”

“We recorded Megaplex with Max Hart, who made our last record with us, and who is an old and very dear friend - he was our touring keyboardist in the Brain Thrust Mastery days, before he left to find glory playing with Katy Perry.

“We used Tim Wheeler’s studio in midtown Manhattan, which is a room we hang out in quite a bit, socially, so everything felt sort of like we were just messing around in a friendly space.

“We recorded it pretty quickly — in maybe about two and a half weeks, total, over three different sessions, so it all felt quite breezy.

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“This album has been slightly different from the norm, in that Chris himself came in with a crop of tunes of his own — You Failed is the first Chris Cain original on a WAS record, which is an exciting new development.

“Overall, it was a real joy, and I think you can hear the fun coming through in the recordings.”

BUY TICKETS TO ‘WE ARE SCIENTISTS’ AT THE GLASGOW GARAGE – CLICK HERE. 

Their upcoming show next month coincides with Keith's birthday so fans have been warned to expect an even more celebratory performance than usual.

"I would like to share a drink with everyone who comes to the show, and with We Are Scientists, that’s not an empty promise — after another (to-remain-unnamed) member of the band had a birthday show in Glasgow, he shared so many shots of Buckfast with reveling fans, afterwards, that he spend much of his special day vomiting behind a dumpster.

"I promise to be more temperate than he was, but just as jubilant."

We Are Scientists will play Glasgow Garage on May 10.

BUY TICKETS TO ‘WE ARE SCIENTISTS’ AT THE GLASGOW GARAGE – CLICK HERE. 

WHAT TO SEE IN GLASGOW THIS WEEK:

The Streets,
O2 Academy, tomorrow
Mike Skinner will be bringing his band to the city for the first time in seven years this weekend.

They will be performing all their greatest hits including “Has It Come To This?”, “Weak Become Heroes”, “Dry Your Eyes” (taken from the multi-platinum-selling album, “A Grand Don’t Come for Free”) and “Blinded By The Lights”.

The band released the first new single in six years “Burn Bridges at the end of 2017 much to the delight of fans.

Callaghan, 
Oran Mor, April 23
Three-time BBC Radio 2 playlisted artist Callaghan will released her latest EP Skin On Skin on Friday March 2 ahead one of her biggest UK tours to date.

She’ll kick off her UK tour in Liverpool on April 17 and then play a series of dates across the UK including her first headline shows at Sage Gateshead, Oran Mor in Glasgow, Lincoln’s Drill Hall and her biggest ever London show at Bush Hall on April 26.