INTERVIEW: WE ARE SCIENTISTS ON THEIR NEW RECORD, STAYING FRIENDS FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS AND LOATHING THE AMERICAN OFFICE

It’s a cliché that Englishmen talk about the weather as a way to swerve deeper and more existential topics. I’ve always believed it’s a preference for metaphor and allegory as opposed to a flat out denial of psychosis – though this too is a sort of disavowment. If this clichéd Englishman is more than a vehicle for seething side character in sitcoms, splitting the cardboard and plastics in the recylcing while their wife drinks rosé and flirts with the gardener – can you picture it? – then surely an American indie-rock group who put existential crisis at the centre of the disco, with lines such as “This night is winding down, but time means nothing” surely a band like that would embody the myth of the earnest American rocker, serious and direct, every chat a therapy session and every interview a deepdive into the belly of the godless beast. That might usually be the case but there is something quintisentially English about New York rockers We Are Scientists and I begin by asking singer Kieth Murray about this.

You guys strike me as being quintisentially English while being American. Why is that?

I don’t know. That’s a very good question. As a band we definitely spent our formative years in the UK. When we were writing our first records we were very into English acts or the American acts we liked were bigger in the UK. We were very into The Rapture, who were bigger in the UK. We were very into Yeah Yeah Yeahs who did well here but were probably bigger in the UK. I think our allegiance to humour makes us feel more English than fairly self-serious American bands. We didn’t spent much time there before we started touring. I’m very in the The Office and Monty Python and I very much like a British citizen find the American Office utterly intolerable. I truly truly loathe the American Office.

How has the writing process changed since your first record to your latest record?

When we first started out with our first record Love and Squalor all of the songs were absolutely written purely to be performed live. I think they would start with me probably me on an acoustic guitar like coming up with the germ of a song, going into our rehersal space, generally we only wrote songs for new shows. We would hash out arrangements in the rehersal space, play a song live and say “well that sucked” and then go back and figure out why it sucked. The crafting of a song took much longer, the moment of conception was just a small piece of it. Nowadays I have a writing room and understanding of production and more happens in the moment of writing. If we have an idea we try and figure out in the moment what it could be. In our first few records which we made with a guy called Ariel Rechtshaid he essentially was a fourth member of the band and really rolled up his sleeves on arrangements and things like that. These days it’s much more like Chris and me in a room. I feel like we’ve gone backwards on the Beatles mode, where it started with John and Paul and a guitar and then in the end there’s all these people with instruments and George Martin contributed. We’ve one the other way.

I was talking to someone about this the other day and they had this theory that ever since Eno did that thing where the studio became another instrument all the bands now want to have a go at that and be involved in production.

Absolutely. I think it’s just a matter of understanding it. On our first few records making records was my least favourite part of it. When you are in a studio with producers, assistants and the rest, you take forever waiting around. The first records took like two hundred hours to record and a large part of that was someone moving a mic in the right position to record and I wanted to be anywhere else but there.

Have you got any rules for the studio? I know Quincy Jones says always approach the studio as if you’ve never been in one before.

Not really. A lot of our work now happens in our home studio. Our main rule now is we desperately try to avoid making records because we have ten songs, now we want to have a hundred songs and reflect on those and say these are our favourite songs, this is ridiculous but to say these ones are objectively good, but the ones I like are the ones that are not objectively good. But the early records we used to say “oh my god we need twelve songs to widdle down to ten.” I used to dread writing periods, I panicked when the tour finished and we had to write. Now we are much better at always writing. We have a backlog of songs we won’t mind if we have to throw out. It’s much more fun now than it used to be. There was a bit of stress writing songs to be performed for our first shows where there was five people there, who were our girlfriends and whoever they could drag to a show.

Sometimes that’s even more scary playing and you know you are going to speak to everyone in the crowd after the show and they can tell you what they thought.

That’s true. You would have to discuss the show with everyone after.

So one hundred songs is a lot of writing. Does it not hurt a little bit to get rid of some of the songs?

Yeah it does. I think I’ve gotten much better at personally being excited about a song and playing it for Chris and him going “meh”. A benefit of now being pretty good at recording ourselves is that our demos are generally pretty close to the album version. I have dozens of songs recorded that I listen to all the time that noone else listens to.

Is the first step always you with a guitar singing to Chris?

No that will almost definitelty never happen again. The awful vulnerability of sitting there and playing a song is awful. We now have an online streaming platform that we load all of our songs on. Then when the list hits too many songs it’s time to make a record.

So which bands are up there in the canon for you that you have sought to be like?

Aping is a strong word but at the start we were very very into The Rapture and Liars first record. Franz Ferdinand was absolutely my favourite british band from that era. We are really into dance records. Like every band of that time we were way into Gang Of Four. It was in the air at that moment and we were breathing it deeply.

You’ve been playing dance indie rock for a long time now, how have the audiences changed, a few more bald spots or has the nature changed?

It feels like it hasn’t changed that much. I tend to lean more towards fulfilling that role of We Are Scientists. I get antsy when our sets are not high octance and aggressive. Sometimes I envy the mid tempo bands like Coldplay. When you start in the middle there’s more room to wriggle. Our live set is still very much full on. Every once in a while I think it would be fun to book smaller venues and play our mid tempo songs.

The audience might be there thinking this is brilliant but not dancing.

Yes that’s it, that’s what scares me. At our first the shows the average age was sixteen. Those shows were nuts. I am conditioned that when people are standing respectively enjoying the show I’m affronted. Which is funny because when I go to a show I stand and nod along and love it.

With this new album was there anything you wanted to do differently?

The further we get from spiky indie rock the bass is doing a lot of the melodic work, which I think is often the opposite of rock music. In the first records everyone was singing padded keys melodies all the time, now it’s less hectic.

Your voice is sounding strong still what’s the secret?

I don’t take very good care of my voice. I did take my doctor’s advice and not hang out in loud bars talking loudly all the time. Singing isn’t that bad for your voice but talking really loudly is terrible for it. It’s very boring but I chill out more post-show. It’s easier now we’re not twenty three. After every show we used to stay out until four in the morning. Now we go back and watch Jurassic World, again.

Okay final question. Lots of late nights, touring and the rest, how do you keep a healthy band marriage going?

The ecosystm of our personal life, I do think that our band is somewhat weird that our friendship is more important than the music. And we still enjoy writing new songs, while that’s enjoyable it’s easy to keep going.

Qualifying Miles is out this Friday, 18th July and We are Scientists are on tour now.

We Are Scientists: Facebook / Instagram 

Interview by Patrick Malone

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