Over the past two weeks I have slowly become obsessed with We Are Scientists.
Why? I don't know. I didn't mean to. But I find myself wanting to listen to their record over and over. It's catchy, melodic, somewhat dance-rock, but not too cool. A little bit John Vanderslice in spirit and vocals, a little bit Interpol in guitar sounds and NYC-ness, a little more pop rock than I usually listen to. But I dig it, I'll admit it. It cheers me up.
In their bio [1], the band describes their music thusly:
First there are melodies, some of them catchy. They can be found in the vocal lines and often, yes, god help us, the guitar lines. Second, and lastly, we try to have each instrument do something distinct from what the other instruments are doing as often as possible. So for example the bass doesn’t just play the root notes of what the guitar is playing, and it doesn’t necessarily hit when the bass drum is hitting. We call this approach, which we didn’t invent, and which many people do much better than we do, Advanced High Level Sectional Articulation.
Now that I think about it, I really am a sucker for Advanced High Level Sectional Articulation. Don't get me wrong about the JV allusion earlier though -- I don't expect W.A.S. to get footing in my heart like JV's music. But I am looking forward to seeing them live at SXSW and again at Noise Pop.
Listen to "Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt" and "The Great Escape"
[1] Ben may be interested to know that they use footnotes in their bio.
