INTERVIEW: We Are Scientists set their sights on the road
Photo: We Are Scientists, featuring Keith Murray and Chris Cain, will soon head out on an expansive North American tour. Photo courtesy of Dan Monick / Provided by Reybee with permission.
We Are Scientists, like every other band, were greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, yet their creativity never stopped. They kept working and recording, even though live gigging was not an option. The result of their studio sessions are two new albums: Huffy from 2021 and this year’s Lobes. And now the band is (finally!) able to bring these new tunes, plus their classic tracks, to audiences in the United States and Canada. We Are Scientists kick off an extensive tour Nov. 6 in Toronto, with dates continuing until Dec. 15, when they finish off the run of shows at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan.
We are Scientists consist of Keith Murray on guitar and vocals, Chris Cain on bass, and Keith Carne on drums. They consider themselves a Brooklyn-based dance rock band, and for those keeping count, there are three “cool” terms in that self-description — with “Brooklyn” being the coolest.
Recently Murray and Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails about the new albums and the band’s touring plans. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
Did the idea for Lobes come at the same time as Huffy?
Well, that’s a slightly complicated question to answer. The very idea of differentiating Huffy from Lobes happened all at once. We started off recording a large batch of songs in February 2020, and as we were whittling down the very large pool of songs that we had to choose from (we had something like 100 total demos in play), we realized that not only did we like too many of the songs to reduce them to a single, reasonably-sized record, but that they could be reasonably classified into two separate genres: a more rock-centric group versus a more electronic pop/dance group.
Now look, I’m not deluded enough to convince myself that my writing output is so eclectic and far-reaching that the songs couldn’t possibly sit together on a record, but we thought the resulting album would feel a little less coherent, if we tried to cram all of these songs onto one record. We had a lot more of the rock style songs — the songs that became Huffy — written and ready to go, so we took our favorite four or five of the more electronic pop songs and earmarked them for a later record, which became Lobes, once we’d written the rest of that album’s songs, following Huffy’s completion.
Do you see these last two albums connecting, or are they distinct projects?
They absolutely are connected, given that the seeds for Lobes were essentially foraged off of the same tree that produced Huffy, to deploy a poorly-considered agricultural metaphor. Plus, the specifications for the songs that we were aiming to write, post-Huffy, were essentially defined by the elements that we felt differentiated the first few Lobes songs from Huffy, as a whole. We like to say, over and over, that Huffy is sort of our daytime rock record, meant for playing during the day, while you’re jet skiing around Miami’s Biscayne Bay, and then Lobes is the album that you’d put on late that night, when you’re going out to the Miami clubs and getting up to sleazy shenanigans, or whatever. Not that I’ve ever gotten up to any sleazy shenanigans, personally — I can just imagine doing so, and, in my imagination, Lobes is the soundtrack.
How did the song “Turn It Up” come to be?
“Turn It Up” was one of the songs that we’d written after Huffy was completely finished, when we knew that we were looking to make an upbeat, danceable, electronic record. At that point, many of the songs that we had for Lobes skewed slightly toward the darker, sexier, more sinister side of electronic pop, and I really wanted to balance that element with some more plain-old, fun dance tunes, just some really dumb jams that would hit you in the pleasure centers. That mandate is really what led to the writing of “Turn It Up” and “Less From You.” Those two were among the very last songs written for Lobes, meant to add some more pep to the album as a whole.
Are you excited to finally be touring North America again?
Oh man, of course. We always feel like we’re slightly giving short shrift to the poor old United States, tour-wise. This is going to be the first full-length tour we’ve done in the U.S. since 2018, I guess? Our American tour for Huffy got chopped up and heavily reduced, once Omicron started rearing its ugly head in 2022, and we ultimately ended up really only doing a tour of the West Coast and then a separate short run of the Northeast. We had to cancel all of the Southwest, Texas and the Southeast, which was a major bummer, since these are all places that we tend to get pretty excited about visiting, just on a touristic level. And then, yeah, we’re really looking forward to being in California for Thanksgiving — we have a lot of friends and family there who, due to the eternal East Coast/West Coast rivalry, might otherwise never get to break bread with us, on that special day.
Lobes is more danceable than previous albums. How do you know a song is danceable? Do you dance along while songwriting?
Huh. I really don’t know how to answer that one. Like, I could just be utterly reductive and say that when it has a consistent 4/4 beat at around 120 BPM, or whatever, it feels dancy. Or else I could be totally hippie-dippy and esoteric about it and say that you just “feel” it, man. But, yeah, I guess that both are pretty true. You can tell by the nuts and bolts of the song that it’s meant to be a dance track, and then while you’re working on it, you just totally feel the dance vibes. So therefore you have a dance song.
It’s kind of hard to dance while you’re doing the actual songwriting, and you’re chained to a keyboard or have a bass strapped over your shoulders or whatever. But, you know, you can groove like a DJ, spinning at the festival, kind of just pumping your head back and forth, while you’re hunched over the desk. I guess we’re psychically like Tiësto, while we’re writing dance tracks.
What’s it like collaborating with Chris Cain?
It’s like eating an excellent carrot cake while watching Terrifier 2 in 70mm at an IMAX theater, and the viewing comes immediately after having shared a pitcher of top-tier frozen margaritas, plus also you’re in Bali. Which is to say: It is very, very good to collaborate with Chris Cain.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
We Are Scientists’ two new albums are Huffy and Lobes. They kick off a North American tour Nov. 6 in Toronto. Click here for more information and tickets.
