Thursday December 21st

We Aren't Scientists vs We Are Scientists

On November 9th, wearentscientists.com took a journey over to London, England to have a couple of quiet words with We Are Scientists. We crashed their dressing room, drank their beer and insulted their videos. This was the result.

Part Two

Alison: Chris, is it your baby on Crap Attack?
Chris: Yeah that’s Dash; he’s a very sloppy eater, even for a baby. He’s exceptionally sloppy. He eats like a dog eats.
Keith: And he eats what a dog eats.
Chris: I never made that connection that could be why.
Keith: You can hardly blame him for disrespecting the presentation.
Chris: And also we do put it in a bowl on the floor and just sort of lie him down next to it.
Keith: And like a dog, he’ll eat until he’s sick. He won’t stop.
Alison: were the pictures taken specifically for Crap Attack?
Chris: No those photos were not shot for Crap Attack, they were shot for posterity. And Crap Attack is all about posterity and integrity and artistic merit and so forth, so we thought, ‘what a fit.’

Alison: Are you annoyed that it’s not getting good reviews or do you not really care because it’s not a proper album?
Chris: Not getting good reviews? It’s getting great reviews. I saw a review just yesterday that was two out of five stars. That’s amazing.
Keith: That’s truly amazing.
Chris: That is way better than we expected.
Alison: I did see one that was four out of five today.
Keith: Whaaat!!?
Chris: Yeah some really like it. To be honest, I don’t think it’s appropriate to review it as an album, which I think a couple of people seem to think. NME gave it a six, that’s one point shy of what they gave our album.
Keith: Whaaat!!? That’s fucking insulting.
Michael: They reviewed it?
Chris: And they gave it a fucking six.
Keith: Jesus Christ.
Michael: I mean if you look at it for what it is… it’s not like album material.
Chris: That’s exactly right; it’s just supposed to be for fans. We initially put it together ourselves and we wanted to just have it on the website and on our merch booth for fans. Sell it as cheap as we could and just have it for people who didn’t buy the singles really so they could get them all in one place and the UK label really wanted to take it to retail because they loved it. They called it the number two record of the last two years. So we were okay with it, but yeah I think reviewers are maybe getting the wrong idea when they try to listen to it straight through as an album.
Alison: And they don’t seem to be reviewing the DVD.
Chris: yeah cos the DVD was the most important thing for us and that usually gets a last paragraph mention if anything.

Ellie: Were you starting to run short of videos when you’ve got those lazy videos?
Chris: Those were actually the first ones we did. The most ambitious artistically.
Michael: The ones where we don’t move.
Chris: So shut yer mouth, c’mon!
Michael: We actually pitched that idea to our label as the idea for Nobody Move video.
Chris: It’s true.
Ellie: I see what you did there.
Michael: We really thought it would be good.
Chris: We thought it would be probably the funniest video ever. And it would’ve done. The bear video’s a pale shadow.
Keith: I don’t know if you know, but they’re based on video art that had a fucking presentation in the Tate Modern. Alright sooooo, gonna act like that doesn’t have fucking artistic merit? Ever heard of the Tate Modern? There’s this really wonderful… if you just follow the river a little bit East…
Chris: We’ll explain what a museum is first.
Keith: Okay so, I’ll write em a letter.
Ellie: Didn’t say they didn’t have artistic merit, just thought they were a little bit lazy…
Keith: Bit lazy?
Chris: We spent a full afternoon shooting three of those.
Keith: Eight of those.
Chris: well we actually shot about eight, then used the three best.
Ellie: I watched them with fast forward pressed down, it’s quite interesting.
Chris: Fast forward button? They’re not meant to be watched in fast forward.
Ellie: I know, I was busy, had to watch em quick.
Chris: Fair enough.
Alison: I couldn’t find Crap Attack in my town, I haven’t got it yet.
Keith: Good town. She lives in a utopia!
Chris: They’re very restricted into what they let into these towns.
Keith: It’s like those towns that don’t let chain stores in.
Chris: No Starbucks, no Crap Attack or record stores
Alison: There is no Starbucks.
Keith: See.
Alison: yeah I think they tried, but there was an uproar.
Keith: Starbucks won’t do it, there’s an uproar.

Alison: Seeing as you obviously enjoy making movies - will you ever do a We Are Scientists movie?
Chris: Do we unveil now?
Keith: Tell them!
Chris: We’ve got a little deal with a certain Jerry Bruckheimer, a little development deal. The deal is he raises the two hundred mill for production, we write whatever the fuck we want.
Keith: The working title we have now is Navy Seals Go Fucking Crazy.
Chris: Yeah it’s a werewolf World War 2 caper drama. It’s a sex romp.
Keith: A comedic sex romp through World War 2.
Chris: A werewolf situation.
Keith: But time travelling navy seals going fucking crazy.
Chris: And the navy seals have to go back and try to get the lead out. We play a lot of the characters. Navy seals, werewolves...
Keith: We do a Peter Sellers thing where we keep showing up as different characters. Just us and Mark Ruffalo. That’s the entire cast.
Chris: Mark Ruffalo only plays one character too.
Keith: It’s a woman. He plays the romantic lead, female.
Chris: he’s great, his shoulders look broader on film than we would’ve liked.

Alison: How good does it feel to be playing two sold out Brixton shows?
Keith: I don’t know if you’ve heard the time Editors played three?
Chris: So basically we lost.
Keith: It’s a defeat.
Chris: We lost to losers. How does that feel? It doesn’t feel great?
Alison: Do you think you could’ve sold out three?
Keith: Yeh.
Chris: Absolutely, we could’ve sold out 4, and that’s what we keep telling Editors and they say “well, you didn’t!” And we just punch em or claw at them and get pulled away by their security guards. I don’t know, it’s a tough situation.

Alison: Do you ever fight amongst each other?
Keith: Only over who gets to the first crack at Editors. You know what really burns? Hard-Fi did five. Five Brixton’s.
Chris: Hard-Fi did five? Oh they’re a much bigger band. Editors are a smaller band than us, that’s the problem I think. I’m talking sonically in terms of vision, personality.
Keith: Hard-Fi are a bigger band
Ellie: How did they sell them out?
Keith: Oh they didn’t sell them out – they did 5. There was like 150 people here each night.
Chris: One of them was almost at half capacity.
Alison: But you sold these out 6 months ago.
Chris: Sure we did, and we could’ve sold out a dozen more but that’s not our style.
Keith: A dozen more like it.
Chris: and we did in other places in the country.
Ellie: Well you played the Manchester Apollo, that’s pretty big.
Chris: Editors have never played there.
Keith: No I don’t think they have.
Chris: Ha!
Keith: You know Dirty Pretty Things, on there very similar tour, don't think they're doing the Manchester Apollo.
Chris: Ha! Dirty Pretty Things have two Brixton’s next month, one of them's not sold out yet.
Keith: Uh oh.
Chris: I called Antony, I said "pull it now"
Keith: Antony pull that show!
Chris: Cancel the second one now dude, you can't have it not sell out. Pull it now, no one will notice.

Chris: We've done a new innovate thing as a band where we have people sign up. We just have people buy tickets to see us.
Keith: Wanna see a show? We don't even say it's gonna be our show. It's like a ticket provider .
Chris: Yeah, we put it up the website. We say "tickets now available" and people buy so many. Then we decide - well what venues shall we put these into?
Keith: Yeah we have software that tracks where tickets were bought and it's like hmm, there's a cluster here...
Chris: We sold 10 thousand a month, lets do two nights in Brixton. Actually we sold 25 thousand in London, we had to send 15 thousand very unhappy fans elsewhere in the country.
Keith: Galway! Aberdeen!
Chris: I'm not talking about Galway. I'm talking about Munich, Germany. That’s what our European tour is. It's the spill off from the UK tickets we sold.
Keith: They may have been the first people to buy tickets, our software's not that good.

Alison: When you finish touring, apart from spending time with your friends and family, what will you get up to?
Keith: With our surfboards.
Chris: Surfboards and I’ve gotta train my dog sled team for the Iditarod. That’s gonna take a long time. A bunch of mutts I got at the zoo.
Keith: I dunno, I feel like when you stated you were gonna put together a fucking dog sledging team. I think I had more ambitious expectations. You have like four Pomeranians.
Chris: There’s that big mutt thing.
Keith: I’m not sure that’s a dog.
Chris: I ordered him on the internet.
Keith: It has like plates. Like a stegosaurus.
Chris: He was abused I think.
Keith: Could just be like an exema scarring thing.
Ellie: Dog sled? Dogs pulling a sleigh? Or dogs in a bob sled?'
Keith: Sled!
Chris: With me on it, yeah. It’s the Iditarod, it’s probably the biggest athletic competition in the United States.
Keith: You’ve never seen Eight Below?
Ellie: No..
Chris: Well that’s in Antarctica.
Keith: I know and it’s not a race.
Chris: Well, it’s a race against time.
Chris: That should’ve been the ad for Eight Below right there.

Ellie: If you were gonna write a lonely hearts ad about you, what would it say?
Michael: One thing I would like to do in that situation is use the opportunity to make a joke like I learned in Borat where I’d write something - say what I’m looking for - then at the end write “NOT.”
Chris: Nice. But they wouldn’t know what you’re not-ing.
Michael: But they’d get all intrigued, the whole time you’re reading it
Chris: Okay yeah, this guys perfect, woaah, over 200k salary wooah okaaay.
Keith: Wait a minute, him again!
Chris: This infamous asshole. Oh noo.
Keith: Mine would say 'Hard-Fi fans a MUST.'
Chris: Hey you’re not exactly limiting the pool are you?
Keith: That’s the point, that’s all it would say.

Alison: Are there any questions that you hate being asked? Ones that really make you groan.
Chris: The ones we dislike are ones that are covered in our bio or press packet.
Keith: Or by common sense yeah. Things like – what’s with the cats?
Chris: Oh great story there!
Michael: We had some cats, we took some photos.
Chris: Are you really scientists? Where did you get your name?
Keith: Who’s that gentleman with the beard? That kinda thing.
Chris: C’mon, read the press packet.
Keith: Do you think like, Editors get - "have you ever traversed a dark hall like on your album cover?", "Did you ever work as editors?" For like some publication.
Chris: Yeah, "are you trained as Editors?" Yeah those are the only bad ones.
Keith: Oh there’s more.
Michael: I don’t like most questions.
Chris: Michael doesn’t like people prying.
Keith: Yeah he’s like why are you so nosey?
Chris: What’s the deal, what are you like writing a book? Being a private detective? Did I murder your niece? What the hell's this?
Keith: Actually he asks that because … if that’s the case.
Chris: Did I by any chance murder your niece?
Keith: Then he's out.
Chris: He goes out the window before anyone can grab him. Squirly as hell.
Keith: Usually when he asks that the tone is, “did I murder your niece”
Chris: Wait wait wait you look familiar; you look kinda like your niece that I think I might’ve murdered? Have I hit on something painful maybe?

Alison: What’s your favourite part of wearentscientists.com?
Keith: My favourite part is that the only interviews that have me sleeping next to them are my interviews. I’m the only one that’s ever got a ‘Slumbering Murray Review.’ That’s my favourite part – I mean, I guess it’s not my favourite part of the website, that was just my favourite realisation, as aided by the website
Chris: Don’t be too hard on yourself, you do so many interviews.
Ellie: There wasn’t any by Michael, they would’ve surely...
Keith: They would’ve surely involved… it would’ve been me with just X’s over my eyes.
Chris: Yeah it would’ve been a Murray corpse icon.
Alison: Actually I added a new interview with just Michael the other day, and it would’ve probably been a sleepy one but because it was the first sole Michael interview, I had to give it a grin.
Keith: What is this Michael empathy that exists like around the world unanimously? People are willing to give him
Chris: He’s a charity case situation. He’s a cause, a cause, people love a cause.
Ellie: He’s got a sad face.
Chris: Yeah he’s got those sad puppy dog eyes.
Keith: That’s like when people do things like vote for George Bush for president. It’s an error, I know you feel bad, and it’s like funny kind of.
Chris: At least you understand your reasons.

Ellie: We had to follow you for so long to get a sleeping picture.
Keith: Where did it come from? What Travelodge?!
Alison: It was from a V2006 interview.
Keith: When I was sleeping, where they asking who I was excited to see? And they said "well what about Editors?"
Chris: You nodded off in a surprisingly authentic way. And he did his face dripping with cum face. I saw that one too, he's a gifted mine.
Alison: You may have been talking about Bloc Party at the point.
Keith: Sleeping? I would never, I wouldn't dare! They're bigger than us.
Alison: There was a bit about how they paid to get a bigger slot than you at V.
Keith: Yes they did.
Chris: Well they've got a lot of money, they're a bigger band.
Keith: Because they're huge and successful and brilliant.
Chris: And strong and handsome.
Keith: So strong.
Chris: Really good looking guys.
Keith: Oh god oh my god oh my god oh my god.
Alison: Better looking than Art Brut?
Chris: Oh hell yeah.
Keith: No offence to Art Brut, but jesus christ, what a ridiculous question!
Michael: Who's good looking?
Keith: Bloc Party.
Chris: Compared to Art Brut. Art Brut are really handsome. From 200 yards. You know what I'm saying?
Keith: Art Brut are a bunch of butterfaces. Ian's got a great body. But his face, butterface!
Chris: Butterface, not so nice. I don't know, I'm following your lead. I don't understand the thing about Ian.
Keith: I'd do anyone in Art Brut.
Michael: You have.
Chris: And in 3 out of 5 cases he has.
Keith: Yeah I have, this is just in case any investigative reporting reveals.
Chris: To be fair, their charm does not lie in the physical realm. No god no. It's their command over the mathematics. It'll compel the human heart.
Keith: What's that?
Chris: Compelsssss. I was editing. Better than Editors ever could, god dog sure.
Keith: Hate those guys.
Michael: Yeah, they ought to try some self editing.

Alison: So what made you choose BoyzIIMen, was it a song you liked in particular Michael?
Michael: That song was number one for 14 weeks. Everyone loves that song.
Ellie: Everyone knows the words to that song.
Michael: And everyone loves it, but most people don’t realise they love it.
Ellie: Or they won’t admit they love it.
Michael: They will today. Take a look around today.
Keith: Yeah, every night thereafter.
Michael: The idea about everyone loving the song and not realising they love the song is also referenced in the very words of the song. Second verse, “Girl I know you really love me you just don’t realise.” Basically we’re throwing the entire song on the audience. Demonstrating the trust of that statement, as the song is the guy in the relationship and everyone in the audience is the girl who has left this song which that they once loved, because it was number 1 for 14 weeks…
Chris: 14 weeks!
Ellie: Did you buy a copy?
Michael: No.
Ellie: Singles work differently in the states, how does it get to number one?
Michael: In American, number one is based on radioplay.
Ellie: Did you phone up and request it?
Chris: Yes
Michael: Yes.
Chris: Constantly I had my local station on speed dial.
Michael: You see how everyone… society’s relationship with that song.
Keith: Oh is he back on the societal thing again?
Michael: Mirrored directly the lyrics, written before the song had the relationship with society.
Chris: So basically BoyzIIMen saw the future.
Michael: And documented it.
Chris: And when they had documented it enough, in an almost sloppily obvious way.
Keith: Yeah it’s really embarrassing.
Chris: I mean now we all know that BoyzIIMen can see the future and various governments are gonna be trying to get at least one member of BoyzIIMen in their clutches and force him to prognosticate.