Interview with We Are Scientists
‘Return the Favour’s like that though; you think you’re just easing into a nice nap situation, then blast off! You’re headed to the fuckin’ moon.
It would be easy to forgive a band, who are almost fifteen years into their musical journey, for some level of apathy. A lack of energy in their output, a disinterest in their press duties. Not so, dear fellow, not so at all when you have the playful and humble minds of the We Are Scientists boys. With their fourth full-length release seeing light of day this month, and a single like ‘Dumb Luck’, which has all the vigour of a randy teenager, the maintained energy in their music is affirmed. But how about this, probably their 1,347th press interview? Still the same enthusiasm, trademark humour and humility? You bet your bottom dollar. We have to thank Chris Cain, sincerely, for his time ahead of the tour…
I’ve never been asked to announce myself before – I thought it was an automated request. I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I feel like I should have given more than my, “hel-lo.” You definitely didn’t knock it out of the park. I’ll take into consideration that it was your first.
Chris, you’re playing Norwich next month as part of your tour – I don’t know if you’re aware – - Wait, wait, wait… what? Tour?
It’s pretty long actually. You’d better start packing. It’s quite serious. Right, well I shouldn’t be asking you about this. This is a question for my manager. It’s definitely the first I’ve heard.
I should warn you that we’ve just put our previous magazine to bed, so I’ve been up many hours of the night and am on that kinda hyper-energy talking to you now. I imagine it’s a feeling you know more than well, after all these years being a musician. Absolutely, and it can also be a very productive mindset really, I find. Although it’s difficult to spend many long hours focusing on something, it is a very creative mindset; you can do some of your best creative thinking when you’re manic from fatigue and / or alcohol hangover.
I agree; I always write my editors note just before we go to print, right on the edge of my tiredness, and never read it through. Nice. Do you ever look back?
No, I just have to look at the disappointed face of my mother to know what I’ve written. - Then you know you nailed it.
I was obviously thrown by this conference call line, because I thought I was calling a South African dialling code, but obviously not. South Af-ri-ca…? No, and I probably dialled a different code than you did. I called a US one, and you should have a UK one.
My South African research can all go out the window now then. Wow, well I can pretend I’m in South Africa right now, and just be fairly vague on the detail.
I wish you would; how’s the weather? Y’know, it’s good, a little bit grey but nice.
Cuisine? Erm, well I’ve been eating a lot of Doritos, so I don’t really know much about the local cuisine.
Er… interracial tensions? Well it seems a lot better than in a movie I saw, but there’s still a little something in the air, you know.
That sounds like a heady climate you have going on down there… in South Africa… Oh yeah, well there’s a reason I live here. [Laughs] To me, it’s the centre of the universe in 2014.
To do a little housekeeping first, there’s something that I wanted to clear up: the cats on the cover of ‘Love and Squalor’, are you still in touch with them now? Yes, they’re sitting in front of me as we speak. One of them’s an incorrigible beggar, begging for yoghurt, which is his favourite dish, so I’m just tolerating the beggars’ mewing.
It’s good to know they’re doing OK. Are they on the payroll? No, they are enslaved. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if enslaved is the word as they’re well fed and receive shelter and whenever they have an ailment, they receive medicine. But they don’t get any kind of wage.
Was the film you saw called, ‘12 Years a Cat Slave’? It’s actually been ‘14 Years a Cat Slave’; that’s the movie they didn’t want you to see.
Chris, enough of this hysteria; I remember many years ago, you came over to England for the NME Tour. You were fresh-faced and eight years younger than you are now. Do you remember the tour? Sure thing.
You really left your mark on the UK, didn’t you? We just seem to love you. Yeah. There’s no question about that.
Do you have the same level of success at home in the US? I couldn’t gauge it from this standpoint. Not quite; we do alright here but if you were to look at the average size theatre we play on a tour of the US, it would be probably half the size of the average theatre in the UK, so do with that what you will.
Coming back here as well, you’ve been tremendously loyal; you could’ve just reaped the benefits of our affection and then never returned, but you come back a lot. It’s always tempting; it was tempting. There were those who told us that’s what we should have done.
You stole something last time you left, and that thing was Andy Burrows – - Ah, yes.
He’s played drums on the new album, ‘TV en Français’ too, hasn’t he? He wasn’t just a fly by night. Nope, he’s become an integral part of the We Are Scientists machine. This is his second record he’s collaborated with us on and he actually moved to New York for a year to work on the damn thing with us, which was excessive on his part, but you know, impressed us. Now he’s back in the UK, but we’ve got the record, so… who won, I ask you?
Did he integrate well into New York City? Did he integrate well? Yeah, he was much beloved. He left the City with more friends than either Keith or I have. Probably more than the two of us combined. That’s a little bit nettling. That nettled us.
But I know him to be a very interesting fellow, and a workhorse of a musician. Music to him, you know – he lives and breathes more purely as a musician than anyone I know. It’s What. He. Does. And there’s nothing more he wants to do. He does enjoy a cheeky beer down the pub though – he does like to do that.
I’ve had the tremendous pleasure and honour of listening to ‘TV en Français’ on my laptop and all told, it’s quite a tender little number in places. What I’ve learnt from listening to you over the years is that you guys know how to structure a melody that you can hang your hat on and then you seem to play around that, from there. How close to the actual songwriting process am I there, or am I just pissing in the wind? Well certainly we don’t move forward with a piece of music, or even really consider it a song until there’s, as you say, a melody to hang one’s hat on. We’re not a groove-based band; we wouldn’t find a cool groove and say, “ooh, we should make that into a song.” That would never be a starting place for We Are Scientists. It’s always the melody, and then once there’s something interesting there, then it’s a matter of bringing some kind of cool flavour to it; some kind of feel, then the lyrics and so forth. You’re dead on.
I very much like the way ‘Return the Favour’ does this; it lures you in, doesn’t it – you feel like you’re being softly swaddled by the song – then it breaks down at the end. Is that where you really go to town, where as musicians you can really express yourselves? In ‘Return the Favour’? Yeah, for sure; I like to think of that song as – did you ever read the Tin Tin books? Do you recall the one where it’s something on the moon? ‘Destination Moon’, or something like that? They’re taking a rocket that Professor Calculus has designed to the moon and it’s gonna be the first trip, but the Thompsons - you know, the batshit crazy investigator guys – get on the rocket ship and fall asleep, and they blast off with them in the hold. Actually, they don’t wake up during blast off; they wake up an hour later. I think ‘Return the Favour’s like that though; you think you’re just easing into a nice, maybe nap situation, then blast off! Blast off. You’re headed to the fuckin’ moon.
I tell you what else is a blistering song – ‘Dumb Luck’. The rest of the world’s had the pleasure of experiencing that one too. For me, it might knock off ‘Nobody Move…’ from the top played We Are Scientists track list on Spotify. What do you think about that? I’d love to see it happen.
Because ‘Nobody Move…’ is a bit of a Spotify behemoth, isn’t it? It’s a monster; it’s a monster alright. We have actually had conference calls with executives from Spotify trying to figure out what to do about the burden that ‘Nobody Move…’ is on their servers. I mean, there is no easy solution. So they, as well, would be quite happy to see ‘Dumb Luck’ shoulder some, or even all of the weight that ‘Nobody Move…’ has borne for so long. ‘Nobody Move…’ is sort of like Atlas, you know; he’s got earth on his shoulders and then all of a sudden, Hercules came and you know, he could take the burden. I’m not making this story up – this actually happened. Of course Hercules took the burden for a moment, but then tricked Atlas into taking it back. Not a very clever trick either. Hercules was not a clever man, really, by most estimations. He simply said, “would you take it back while I get in a more comfortable position?” And then Atlas took planet earth back and Hercules said, “Bu-bye.” He was a cruel and pugilistic fellow, Hercules. Not as admirable as the Kevin Sorbo iteration would lead us to believe, if you saw that television show –
- Or the Disney one. Or Disney’s, but Disney’s Hercules might actually be closer to the real one. I mean, that guy is pretty dumb – especially in the first act. He regularly causes havoc with his strength, so maybe that’s a little closer to what happened. But yeah, Hercules would take any opportunity to experience umbrage, and then would always suggest fighting as a solution. Of course, he knew he would win and he killed lots and lots of relatively OK dudes.
A lot like British men. British men? Probably some. I’m not sure he ever travelled as far north as Britain, but if there were Brits in Greece, for example, or down in the Mediterranean way, I suspect that had they fallen in Hercules’ path, he probably would’ve fought them over their accent.
We were talking about ‘Nobody Moves…’, but obviously ‘After Hours’ has been seen 1.4 million times on YouTube, which in quick maths gives me a figure that’s the same number as the Latino LGBT population of the United States. Coincedence? Not even remotely.
[Laughs] I think that should conclude the interview really… [laughs] On a serious note though, when you add up all those sales, the dreams and the video plays, can you even comprehend the scale of We Are Scientists? I don’t know if anyone can. Certainly not a person with my mediocre understanding of mathematics, no.
Chris, you’re coming to Norwich next month and we cannot wait to have you back. We will deliver to you the warmest reception you’ve had to date. I will hold you to that, and if it’s not even the second warmest show at the time we play Norwich, we will storm off stage halfway through.
Emma R. Garwood
We Are Scientists play the Waterfront on March 16th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk or call 01603 50 80 50.
