News
- SxSW, Conan, Grates, etc.March 31st, 2006View
-
Lots going on over here in camp We Are Scientists, none of it any of your goddamn business! But we’re confessional by nature, us three, and besides that we love to talk about ourselves, and besides that we’re bored of this News page looking the same. Like a guy wanted by the FBI for serial murder, this News page badly needs to change its face.
Recently? Well, we played Conan O’Brien’s late night talk show a couple of weeks ago. Telling character detail about Conan O’Brien:Dave Letterman to us privately after we played our song on his show and the sound had cut out: “Thanks for coming on the show! Great job.”
Carson Daly: “Hey, good job. That was great.”
Conan O’Brien: “Wow, interesting time signature on that! … I played a thunderbird once, actually — they’re really weirdly weighted … So this is a ’52 reissue, right? Not an original.”Then a couple days after Conan was South by Southwest. We spent a lot of time watching our friends entrance and destroy audiences all over town: Mystery Jets, Editors, The Chalets, Foreign Born, Oxford Collapse, Arctic Monkeys. We’ve linked to the websites of these bands in case any of them have escaped your attention — that’s why the names of them are glowing all green and blue and have lasers and lightning rocketing out of them, to indicate that they’re links.
And now we’re on tour with Foreign Born and The Grates. We’ve talked your ear off about the Foreign Born, but we’ve been eerily quiet on the issue of The Grates. That’s because until two weeks ago we didn’t know who the hell they were. Now we can think of little else. Our 70+ cumulative years of cumulative knowledge have been incinerated like tinder by The Grates’ hot flame. These fucking kids, these Australian kids, have us in their grip the way a deadly spider will sometimes enwrap a Cocoa Puff in its awful hug. And thence feast rapacious.
We also, in the last two weeks, have recorded not one, not three, but TWO b-sides for the forthcoming re-release of Nobody Move. Fucking get psyched. Smash your promise ring with a hammer — you’re ours now. Not to give away too much, but each b-side will incise you from a different angle; together they will result in your guts and brains being spilled out all over your bedroom carpet. Much to the delight — sorry to say this, but it’s a fact — of your omnivorous dog. It is a FACT.
What’s really going to be a hotbed of activity in the next few weeks is our Shows page. Everybody, there’s so much exciting fuzz about to go down there, it makes us quiver just to write this paragraph — quiver in rhapsody, not, for just this once, fear or the DTs or fear of intimate contact! Like a proud, loyal cat, we will fish from the forest and leave headless on your stoop dates for shows in: Japan, Australia, Canada, every goddamn spot imaginable in the US, and a cumbersome percentage of Europe’s (UK included’s) festivals.
Who is the greater master:
- Nick Sylvester SplatsMarch 6th, 2006View
-
“[We Are Scientists have a] complete unawareness of how dangerously close they are to being complete pricks.”
- Jessica Suarez, toomanyteeth.comGuys, we’re in Munich right now, so we’re a little bit late finding out about this, but holy crap, how exciting is it that Nick Sylvester, that snarky little talent-minimalist from The Voice and Pitchfork, has taken a nasty spill! We’re doing our best to hide our elation but nevertheless find ourselves shouting the news from the highest peak we can access — this website (#5 site in the entire music-related web according to NME readers! #5 on a ballot with five options!).
But so back to the horrific career crash that Nick Sylvester had that he’ll never recover from: In case you haven’t already read about it, it has emerged that he did that reporter thing where you make stuff up instead of doing research, did this for a Village Voice cover story, and got caught. And so now he’s been suspended over at the Voice and pink-slipped at Pitchfork, and his parents are no longer talking to him and his dog growls the whole time that they’re in the same room. And his fish died. And medical doctors have discovered this awful new flesh-eating virus down in the Congo and they’re naming it “Nick Sylvester”.
When Sylvester was a writer, he liked to write about how much W.A.S. sucks — our music, our sense of humor; he even said our “girlfriends suck in bed” in a Voice article a few weeks back, and our “mothers cook bad”. So this has to look like us taking a cheap, vengeful swipe at him — come on, admit it! It does look that way! But what you don’t realize is that, right after the editor at The Voice confronted N.S. about the bad article, N.S. walked out into the hall and keeled over! Not died, but fainted! Like a small child when you scare her really bad! And then Nick Sylvester’s very own dog, who had come along for moral support, pooped right on his master’s unconscious face! And everybody was laughing and filming it and streaming the whole thing live to thousands of huge outdoor IMAX screens set up in public squares all over China!
The moral here, if there is one, has to be that journalists and reviewers should never, ever write pejoratively about We Are Scientists. If they must vent negative feelings, they should cloak them in a thick blanket of bone-dry sarcasm so that most readers think the article is actually positive. - Insight into the hearts of usFebruary 7th, 2006View
-
We generally use this, the News page, to keep you well informed of major real-world occurrences in the life of We Are Scientists and its constituent members, Jegs, Honto, and Tyler. Which, by the way, yeah, we replaced Keith, Michael, and Chris with three other dudes: Jegs, Honto, Tyler. Just, kidding, dudes. Don’t, freak, out. Still, just, us. Keith, Michael, Chris.
But so what we were thinking is: we don’t tend to give you insight into what’s going on in the hearts of We Are Scientists, do we? We don’t tend to let you in on our hopes and fears, do we? So that’s what, very briefly, we’d like to do now. We’d like to give you some idea of what’s going on inside the hearts of us.
Yesterday, as we strolled the streets of Stoke, Michael saw a woman’s hair and thought, Very curly. How does she get it like that? It looks like curly fries. I’m hungry. Keith didn’t notice; he was staring at a little dog. Little dog, eh? You got a name, little dog? thought Keith, mouth agape. You wanna race? If I get that leash away from the kid? Chris, meanwhile, had stepped in a puddle. Fucking… jesus… He stamped his foot on the cold asphalt. Be wet all day, he realized.
This morning, venturing from the bus into Sheffield in search of adventure, Keith saw a car almost hit a man on a bicycle. Jesus! he almost said aloud. Even a block or two later, his pulse was up from witnessing the near-collision.
At a nearby café, Chris ordered a coffee to go. Great! he thought, accepting the warm foam cup with lid from a large man behind the counter.
Back at the bus, Michael slept. In his dream, a goat jerked meat from the ribs of a dead old man. The old man was Abraham Lincoln, but with red and white peppermints instead of eyes. Michael wanted to eat the peppermints but was afraid to agitate the body. Two more goats sat in a car idling nearby. They smoked long cigarettes, twice as long as any Michael had seen, and they were nervously eying the sun. Michael realized the goats were the only way he’d get home in time for bed, so he asked if they’d give him a ride. They said yes, but when he got into the back of the car the goats continued smoking and eying the sun. We’ll finish the smokes, they told him, but the cigarettes were as long as when he’d first seen them. Michael sat in the back of the car for hours, the sun hot on the leather seats, the goats smoking quietly up front, sometimes changing the radio station, but there was only quiet static. He was tired; he couldn’t wait to get home to his bed. At some point he realized there was a black scorpion on the seat next to him, and this woke him up. Dim light came through the little window next to his bunk. He was sweating. He remembered the scorpion and flailed around under his blanket for a moment, then remembered that the scorpion was in the dream. Jesus fucking scorpion, he thought, relieved. - NME Tour 3January 31st, 2006View
-
We’ve dropped into Week Two here on the NME Tour, and we are gathering speed. Shit is starting to get real, we assure you. Take a look at this photo, for example. Ah, but that’s the absolute least of the excess. Never will we forget Michael’s mad mad costuming of two nights past, and neither will you once you gaze upon it. It hasn’t all been fun’n'games, of course. Look what happened when our green tour manager Adam tried to fix the garbage disposal on the bus by himself and without any protective gear for his hands: yikes! And even the most jaded among you, even those who spent weekends as a youth rewinding and pausing (and rewinding and pausing and rewinding and pausing) Faces of Death, will doubtless experience nausea when you see the grisly results of this teenage fan (her entire future ahead of her!) getting caught between the giant nubby wheels of our faithful transport, The Mineshaft Canary. Yes, but everything was back to normal as of last night, when the whole gang — Maxïmo, Monkeys, Jets & Scientists — got together for an improvised, multi-instrument rendition of Achy Breaky Heart on the Mystery Jets’ tour bus. We don’t go anywhere without our MBox, thanks to which you can take a listen here.
- NME 2January 26th, 2006View
-
Let’s take a moment to examine two things:
(1) Our gorgeous new tour bus, The Mineshaft Canary
(2) Michael Tapper’s breadth as an actor
Visible here is the Mineshaft Canary’s fine yellow plumage, whence, along with her shaft-like shape, she gets her name. In the first shot, Michael gives us Thunderous Pensiveness; in the second, Amused Indignation.
Michael wears a look of Gobsmacked Astonishment on entering the Canary and encountering the bunk room.
He chooses a bunk and instantly assumes a look of Near-Parental Pride
Paralyzing Fatigue overcomes him as he tests his new pyre’s character.
Next it’s off to the Command Centre, where collecting his daily per diem brings Michael to The Verge of Rapture.
It’ll take many several cold beers to calm him back down, so when Michael reaches into the fridge and finds the chopped up parts of a dead tramp instead, he registers Cataclysmic Disappointment.
Last stop: the entertainment room. Here, after a few tries, Michael is able to hold all the remote controls at the same time, which results in A Frantic, Breathless Sense of Accomplishment.
On the way back across the street to the venue, Michael encounters a couple of Belfast fans and agrees to pose for a pic; in it, he’s able to express A Mustache.
- NME 1January 24th, 2006View
-
First night of the NME Shockwaves Tour, and shock indeed rippled through the Irish cityside. Dublin, our first visit, though two of us (Murray and Cain) bear heritage. Mystery Jets, 7:30. W.A.S., 8:20. Arctic Monkeys, 9:10. Maxïmo Park, 10:10. A tour of goliaths.
Chris, frayed by overnight travel, neglected to bring his goggles onstage, thus tethering himself, a rottweiler nuzzling his muzzle excitedly into sixpack packaging. Keith and Michael proceeded apace, aware too well that disaster wasn’t an option, that a tour of this size demands at least partial penitence to form; that, jet lag or no, we couldn’t blow this one. Tomorrow night we’ll blow it though, big.
We’re supposed to be shooting footage for MTV2 US and UK, but the camera battery gave out just as we unholstered it to record the inaugural post-show champagne decapitation. We were a painter unrolling his brushes just as the sun goes down. The loss, ultimately, will be born by television audiences the world over.
On a positive tip, the April UK tour has expanded like a tomcat who reverts from his mouse diet to milk. Bristol, Glasgow, and Birmingham have upgraded, and a show at the Empire has been added in London town. Be there or be square. Or be from outside the U.K. - Letterman, Stereogum exclusive, Record releaseDecember 21st, 2005View
-
Apes of Wrath,
So you were watching Letterman Monday night, and it was getting late, sure, and you had to trot off to work the next morning (quite literally trot, if you live in NYC), but you were loving the comedic bits, the witty barbs, that Dave’s hand doctor brought to the table, and then Jim Carey came on and you hadn’t seen him in a while so you steeled yourself against exhaustion and stayed up, and yeah, he’s still got the touch, he was pretty funny, especially when he started manically high-kicking from a seated position, and it was good to hear about his new film, and you enjoyed the clip, and when his interview ended you were happy to have checked in with him and you flicked off the TV and slouched off to bed. What you bed-happy dummies missed:
We Are Scientists Explode Into National Fame on Letterman, Somewhat Timidly, Sure, But With Obvious Goodwill (.wmv)
We know, we know, we look a little stiff, a little reigned in. The fact is, gentle bastards, we were nervous. Give us a break. It was our first time playing for more than a million people. Lasting impressions, you ask? Cold. Blinding, awful cold. Well, not quite that cold, but the set is kept at 48 degrees fahrenheit, per Dave’s directive. And, as anyone who’s seen us live knows, we can only really play at 53 degrees fahrenheit.
Dying for more W.A.S. in a tiny window on your computer? Oh, you really are? Go to Stereogum and take an exclusive look at the It’s a Hit video we made this summer for inclusion on the DVD (available late Spring). It’s funny, this video. Funny in a way that kind of says ‘fuck you’ to the viewer, sure, but still pretty funny.
As to the big-budget, full-bore-no-mistakes-multilayered-rat-attack It’s a Hit video that we shot a few weeks ago, we were happy to hear that MTV2 in the UK and Europe has begun playing it with the kind of frequency that would make you think we’re paying them to do so. (Which of course we are.) If you don’t live in the UK or Europe, then not seeing that video is the least of your worries, but some comfort may be got by watching the preview we made.
And don’t forget, shoppers: coming up very soon, definitely too late for Christmas, is our fine album, With Love & Squalor. Our recommendation is that you set aside at least one CD that you receive as a gift this Holiday Season and, in the second week of January, take it back to Best Buy or Tower or wherever and exchange it for With Love & Squalor. That second or third copy of X&Y that you get from your Aunt is a great candidate for this program.
Anyway, With Love & Squalor is out January 10th in the U.S. Here are some dates for those of you living in other parts of the mall: France/January 10, Germany/March 4, Rest of Europe/February 27, Japan/February 22, Australia/February 5, New Zealand/February 27.
We write “in other parts of the mall”, and you’re thinking, “Man, get a load of these idealistic cynic-type guys,” but you’ve got us wrong. We’re not suggesting that the world is, like, one big consumer dome, minus North Korea. (Not that the world isn’t a big consumer dome — we just wouldn’t know cuz when we travel we’re always in the goddamn van.) Our point is more that it’s kind of odd that the CD is coming out at different times in different countries when economies, at least for things like music, are so tightly connected, even indistinguishable. Especially if you’re talking about digital music (and who isn’t? Prez Bush downloaded his millionth song from iTunes on Monday!), it’s difficult to understand how staggering release dates can work. It would literally be like a CD coming out on one day at the Sam Goody, and months later at the Tower Records at the other end of the mall, and then even a couple of weeks after that at the little food-court CD kiosk. People’s eyebrows? They would be raised. - It's A Hit Video ShootNovember 24th, 2005View
-
We’ve had this week off from shows, from traveling, and it’s been an almost unfathomable bounty. We didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. Michael sat in his room on a foot stool and whacked away at phantom drums with phantom sticks, pausing every three minutes or so to sip from a beer waiting near his feet. Half an hour in he pulled out his camera and took a flash photo of his closet. Chris drove up and down the New Jersey Turnpike; paid tolls; pulled into service areas to grab coffee and pee. Keith spent afternoons at his kitchen table, sharpie in hand, autographing junk mail.
And of course, creatures of rigid habit that we are, we shot another video. This one’s for It’s A Hit, which will be our next single in both the U.S. and the U.K., and will be out around the beginning of the year. Didn’t we already shoot a video for It’s a Hit? For the DVD? Yes we did. But you can never have too many videos, and you can never have enough videos, and so by this time next year we’ll probably have shot half a dozen videos for every song on the album. Which has never been done before, supposedly.
This new video, it’ll be trudging through the post-production muck for a while — we’re going over to Akiva’s place tomorrow to see a rough cut and try our damnedest to polish his chopped turd — but we cut together a short preview for you from some early screen shots. Get a look at this ridiculous bull. - Hot Hot Heat tourNovember 9th, 2005View
-
The East Coast Gets Pummeled Tour, featuring Hot Hot Heat and those rascals The Redwalls, has exploded from the gates.
En route from Columbus to Syracuse we stop at a freeway-side Wendy’s to pick up a faux-healthy snack and loose the gallons pent up inside us. The smell blindsides us coming through the front door and sharpens geometrically as we near the restroom. Inside the restroom nothing is visibly amiss; nevertheless, evidence of great passionate crime courses into our nostrils. Adam, our perspicacious new tour manager/sound expert, assures us that it’s simply a case of: “A fat man came in here and took his first crap in fifteen years.” This has the ring of truth. One further speculates that when fat man jettisoned that long-compressed clay, out scampered a brood of weasels, black as obsidian, wet blinking eyes and all — smelling scampering dense black vicious primordial weasels, splashing around the toilet bowl, threading their way down fat man’s legs, skittering hardshit claws against the tile like snares against the belly of a drum and then out into Wendy’s and the World. - October 12th, 2005View
-
One of the best things about touring with a band is meeting so many nice, interesting people. The other day, in Peterborough, at a Sainsbury’s, we got to meet the UK’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair. He turned out to be the weirdest guy! He didn’t speak a word of politics or economics or stuff about the war; he just told us this:
You know the oddest thing emerged just this weekend from the behaviour [sic] of my cat, whom I call Smallsley, Smallsley the Grey. Espying a finch a’perch a bough in the rear-lawn cherry grove, Smallsley fixed his little stare, angled his head just so, giving him rather a mischievous air, and began chattering his teeth against one another, clapping his two rows of ivory nibs together like a set of wind-up dentures. Smallsley went on about this for probably ten minutes before wandering off to topple his milk dish or perform some similar minor tyranny. I counted his teeth clicks, and it was two hundred ninety-seven. Enjoy your stay in Britain.
