You can dance, for inspiration! Or not.
Call the burn unit; at this very moment, We Are Scientists are in danger of some serious scalding from the "next big thing" smoke signals surrounding them. All the signs are there: in interviews, they seem like mangy, snarky grad-student types, making the occasional offhand comment about Avril Lavigne or Gang of Four. Their music -- aggressive but never rude, tuneful but rarely obvious -- demands attention through speakers large and small. And their album cover has kitties on it. All signs point to wackiness!
And, heck, "next big thing" they just may be. I suspect it won't be hard for We Are Scientists to float a single or two on radio and MTV and sell maybe half a million copies of With Love And Squalor, their jumble-punk debut.
It's a catchy, raspy little record, certainly no slouch in the way of energetic hooks. And if you'd never heard the strain of dance-punk these nerdlingers rehash throughout With Love And Squalor, you might just be fooled into thinking they were doing something really cool and new. But that's just the thing. We Are Scientists aren't a bad band, and on nearly every level, Squalor is a very, very tolerable record. In this time of mainstream acceptance for both the Seth Cohens and Franz Ferdinands of the world, though, a record like the one We Are Scientists have made just kind of feels unnecessary.
Squalor has plenty going for it. As a musical unit, We Are Scientists couldn't be tighter if they were triplets. Not a single song falls anywhere close to flat. And, though they've lifted pretty much everything they do from other bands, at least they're stealing from excellent sources: Brainiac, Duran Duran, the aforementioned Gang of Four. And Lord knows if every band that ever borrowed an idea from The Beatles or The Velvet Underground or Right Said Fred wasn't worth listening to, there wouldn't be many bands out there worth a darn.
It's not the fact that We Are Scientists are petty thieves that makes Squalor an underwhelming record. It's the fact that there's a whole mess of other bands out there using the very same source material to make much, much better music than We Are Scientists have here. So, dear reader, you wanna be the coolest kid on the block, up on all the latest herky-jerky rock and/or roll before anybody else? Don't buy With Love And Squalor. Instead, stash that piggy bank under a pile of clothes you won't move 'til next Tuesday. Then, once laundry day rolls around, run on down to the retail store of your choice and buy For Screening Purposes Only by a group of weirdos who call themselves Test Icicles (yes, it's terrible, but what're you gonna do?). Like With Love And Squalor, it's an old-timey hitchin' of Jam-style punk and big fat disco drums, equally effective for getting spastically jiggy with something as it is for scaring your pets.
But it's way louder, way stranger, and best of all, it won't leave that familiar unpleasant aftertaste of the flavor of the month.
