New York indie duo We Are Scientists bring their 20th anniversary tour of their album With Love and Squalor to Dublin, Cork and Belfast next week. We asked them the BIG questions . . .
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The band, whose songs include Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt, The Great Escape, and After Hours, play Cyprus Avenue, Cork on 7 April, The button factory, Dublin on 8 April, and The Empire, Belfast on 9 April.
They will play With Love and Squalor in full and other tracks on their Irish tour.
The duo of Keith Murray and Chris Cain released their new album, Qualifying Miles, last year.
Tell us three things about yourself . . .
Keith: We are two men of remarkably similar height, weight and build. Chris is a little more muscular, but we can very easily share wardrobe, which is handy for a band.
Between the two of us, we own every book in Richard Stark's series of novels about Parker, the thief. I haven’t read them all because I’ll be sad when I’ve read the last one, although I’m getting old enough now that I should probably get moving on finishing them.
When we’re on tour in Ireland, visiting pubs becomes our second highest priority, just below "delivering the best live show people have ever seen." If you happen to see us on the street looking lost and thirsty, please approach us and give us a pub recommendation.
How would you describe your music?
Chris: We’re either a poppy rock act or a pretty rockin’ pop act. Some of our songs aren’t particularly danceable, but not many. And in the world of lyrics, there are two green pastures: one full of wit and sleight of pen; the other a verdant sea of heartfelt pathos and joy - we stand on a fence that runs directly in between.
Who are your musical inspirations?
Keith: There are way too many to list, comprehensively. Early on, we were pretty inspired by California indie rock bands like Pavement and Weezer. Then we moved to New York City and fell into the scene with dance-punk bands like The Rapture and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Then for a while we were mainly into Hall and Oates and Charli XCX. These days we’re way into young NYC artists like Dirt Buyer and Sean McVerry, as well as random German electronic artists. We’ll listen to anything and steal from it.
What was the first gig you ever went to?
Chris: Def Leppard, 22 October, 1988, at The Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was eleven; my sister took me. Apparently L.A. Guns opened the show, but for that we’re relying on the internet’s memory, not mine.
What was the first record you ever bought?
Keith: The first record I ever had purchased for me at my personal request was the 7" single of Pump Up The Volume by MARRS. I loved it and listened to it on constant repeat for months. The first record I ever bought with my own actual money was Surfing With The Alien by guitar technician Joe Satirani. I bought it on CD as a birthday present for my sister, who was also receiving her first CD player as a gift from my parents. Some jerk at the record store told me it would sound great on CD. I’m pretty sure neither my sister nor I ever actually listened to the entirety of that very bad album.
What’s your favourite song right now?
Chris: That’s a tie between Dirt Buyer’s tune Bulls*** F*** (apologies for the profanity - I trust you’ll deploy asterisks and dashes as needed) and Yebba’s Seven Years.
Favourite lyric of all time?
Keith: "Formed a band, we formed a band" - Look at us! We Formed a Band! By Art Brut.
If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Chris: I’m not sure there’s a satisfactory answer to this question. No song is anywhere near good enough to stand in for the full breadth and bounty of human musical expression, and any that tried would quickly become an object of resentment to the listener. At best, this cursed track would serve as a pallid reminder of the technicolor richness that once was yours to access on a whim. I suspect the experience of listening to it would become too painful to bear, and you’d choose to silence it. Indeed, I’m confident enough in that eventuality to say that there’s no point in making a choice in the first place. Go ahead and take them all, if you must. I guess I’m just a really big reader now.
Where can people find your music/more information?
Keith: Well, it should be on all of the streaming services. I haven’t really checked, but I’m assured that’s the case. Hopefully, you can find it on most radio stations, every day. You can find a lot of our music in whatever format we had room for at the merch booth at our shows. You can also generally hear it on the lips of happy children, worldwide.
Alan Corr
