We Are Scientists, the Brooklyn, New York based power pop troupe are set to return with their sixth album next month.
Megaplex will hit the racks on April 27th.
But before the infamous duo, Keith Murray (guitar/vocals) and Chris Cain (bass) dazzle the world with the 10 brand new splashes of colourful and utterly addictive pop, they are bringing their live show to Milton Keynes.
Lucky ticket-holders will see the band at The Craufurd Arms tonight, making Good Friday a truly great Friday!
The gig sold-out as soon as tickets were released, but if you missed out, settle back and read on - as We Are Scientists go On Track with Total MK...
The song that first awakened your musical senses
Chris: Hmm … that was a long time ago now, uh, probably Katy Perry’s ‘Swish Swish’.
Keith: What? That came out last year!
Chris: Yeah.
Keith: What senses would say were awakened.
Chris: Touch.
Keith: God. That’s not a musical sense, is it?
Chris: It can be when Katy’s in charge.
Keith: Gross.
Chris: What about you?
Keith: Umm … I think that the first song I remember really loving was Pump Up The Volume by Mars. I was really into it as a kid.
Chris: It’s a good song.
Keith: Uh … and I think I spoke about it being the first piece of vinyl I ever owned. And then very recently I got a mystery gift in the mail at my home and it was Mars’ Pump Up The Volume on vinyl. And I was really disturbed that somebody had found my home address, and then maybe like two months later in casual conversation a friend of mine just asked how I liked the record she had sent me as a surprise gift.
Physical or digital - how do you take your music?
Chris: I like … I mean, I certainly use digital way more nowadays.
Keith: Yeah.
Chris: And if I had to choose one or the other I would choose digital I think. ‘Cuz the convenience of being able to listen to everything essentially for free or for a membership fee, it’s pretty great.
Keith: Yeah. I buy a lot of vinyl but I tend to only it in a party setting and I don’t really know why that is except that maybe I want people to see me putting on vinyl.
The first time you thought 'Music - this is the job for me'
Keith: I remember when we were living in Berkley in 1999 or early 2000, we talked about doing a road trip where we were going to take a – you had just got your acoustic bass. And we were gonna take acoustic guitars around and go to open mic nights around the country. I’m really glad we didn’t do that, because we definitely would have quit music immediately afterward. We would’ve said: Music, this is not the job for me. I guess that’s the first time I remember us, you know, plotting a life around that.
Chris: Yeah, I think we were inspired by speech writers LLC because they would, I feel like, do similar things.
Keith: Do just that. Yeah.
Chris: And they got stuck doing it, and they quit.
Your best on stage memory...
Keith: I think mine might be when we were playing Manchester Academy and somebody threw an open beer can which you caught in mid-air and just continued drinking straight out of it, and the audience went nuts. The crowd roared like a lion.
Chris: That was pretty good. I think it was in Manchester as well that I got hit by water bottle in the head.
Keith: That’s my second favourite.
And the worst gig you've ever done
Chris: Worst gig … That’s a good one. We haven’t had very many gigs where we were bad.
Keith: Yeah … what was the show that we got ourselves into that we were like ‘this sucks’.
Chris: Yeah … we’ve had a few of those. It’s never very fun those free outdoor shows are never very fun. But they usually pay you to them. They’re not free for the band to be there, but they’re usually come one come all.
I think the problem with those is that the people who come generally value it low. Like because they didn’t buy a ticket and they didn’t have to really commit to it on their calendar or whatever they’re never that bothered by it. People are less excited or committed or …
Keith: They’re apathetic.
What made you take up the bass
Chris: Well. It was between bass and saxophone really, for We Are Scientists. I mean I took up the bass to play in We Are Scientists and you were on drums, and founding member Scott Lamb was on guitar. So if you’ve got a guitar and you’ve got drums you need either a bass guitar or a saxophone.
Keith: Baritone sax. I guess we didn’t really consider baritone sax enough, we didn’t deliberate over that.
Chris: Well if you think back to the bands we were listening to at the time they were almost all bass guitar.
Keith: We went with the trend at the time.
Chris: We let ourselves sort of be drawn downstream as it were. We’d probably be a much more famous band if we had a baritone sax, we’d be unique, you know?
Keith: Never too late to switch over, I guess.
Chris: Yeah that’s true.
Keith: That’s our new sound.
Chris: We’ll do that between this album and the next one.
Which one song by another artist do you wish you had written
Keith: I’m trying to think of a song that made its author loads and loads of money but also that I wouldn’t mind having to play every night. I mean I guess, if you chose a song that made the author loads and loads of money you wouldn’t have to play every night any more, you could then quit music.
Unless you say I wanna do that. You know what, I kinda wish I’d written that song that they play at the end of Fast and Furious 7, when Brian is driving off on his own separate path, it’s a tender moment and it really puts a pin in a seminal aspect of a well seminal series.
Chris: Yeah yeah. That was written by a dude from Provo who was like 27 or something and he’s the singer, but he wrote the song without the other collaborating artists.
He wrote it for a publishing deal or a songwriting deal and had no success before that. I don’t think he’d been doing it long.
That’s like his first thing that did anything. He didn’t put out an album or anything as an artist he just wrote that song and it got into that fucking thing and it was like a number one hit on the radio. He made good money.
Keith: I wish I wrote that then. People would be telling that story about me! About how I grew up in Provo and all that stuff. Is that what would happen if I wrote it?
And one - by yourself - which holds special significance
Keith: Maybe … That’s What Counts? It’s the one song that has saxophone in it. It’s the closest you ever got to realizing your dream.
Chris: That’s right. And although I tried out for the saxophone on that song, I lost out to Kamasi Washington.
Keith: He nerded out over saxophones.
Chris: Yeah. I felt his performance felt a little buttoned up. Whereas I thought what I could bring to it would be more of a sex pistols vibe.
Keith: It is funny that we definitely did want a grosser saxophone performance than he delivered and I guess now that he’s a big celebrity saxophonist I understand that what he did was deliver a very tasteful cool saxophone part. We wanted honking. Kamasi Washington does not honk.
If you could step into the shoes of another musician, living or dead, who would it be and what would you do?
Chris: Oh that is an elaborate question. And I can guarantee you not one I’ve considered before. It could be fun to step into Michael Jackson’s shoes at age 26 or something. And then just not go off track. Just keep it together. Keep it together and be the biggest fucking thing. I mean he was already pretty much the biggest thing, and that was with a total meltdown.
Keith: Yeah it’s confusing because would you take on this person’s psyche? Or would you just be you in their position and I guess with their skill set? Because Michael Jackson would be really fucked if you just showed up in his body. All his moves would disappear.
Chris: I think you’d have to receive all of their musical gifts. Otherwise that would just be a weird prank to play on the universe.
Keith: I think I would sort of do a little bit of the opposite. I would go into Eddie Van Halen’s body, circa like 1984 maybe. Right after 1984 came out. And then only play chords live. Never solo again. I would strum chords, yeah.
And any genre of music that you simply can't stand?
Chris: There are sub-genres of electronica that I have zero use for. Like them more repetitive stuff that’s for like, I guess for that’s for dancing? Spending long nights dancing on drugs, but only because I don’t do those dancing nights. I don’t know that anyone actually sits at home and listens to that stuff so that’s probably a silly protest to make.
Keith: I think I actively can’t stand that sub-genre like indie that’s like tender folksy indie. Like anything with a ukulele but that’s indie rock I really truly hate. Where it’s like really acting whispery and tender and like fragile. I fucking hate it.
Chris: Yeah, and usually the vocals alternate with an extremely dopey xylophone melody or something.
Keith: You better believe xylophone’s on there, yep yep.
Chris: Yeah. That’s bad.
Keith: Yeah that stuff can die.
You show in Milton Keynes sold out in next to no time - what can we expect?
Chris: A bunch of touts, I guess.
Keith: I was about to say, you can expect to pay a lot of money at the door to a skuzzy fella with the spare tickets.
Chris: Should be good, should be good. Usually high demand indicates fervour.
Keith: Yeah, expect fervency.
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