[2008-05-13] We Are Scientists "Brain Thrust Mastery" (Astralwerks)

Linda · **Posted:** Tue Mar 04, 2008 11:20 pm

Amazon.com
Brooklyn's We Are Scientists make it to their second album, Brain Thrust Mastery, a man down--drummer Michael Tapper departed the band in late 2007--but with a new sound and a refreshed ambition. While 2005's With Love and Squalor marked them out as The Strokes' preppier cousins, lean guitar-indie with arch lyrics and driving tempos, Brain Thrust Mastery has more than rehash on its mind. It's an album that's both bigger and poppier than its predecessor--see gleaming first single "After Hours"--but also eager to experiment and branch out. The opening "Ghouls" echoes fellow Brooklynites TV on the Radio, a synthetic mesh of ticking rhythms, dubby bass and multi-tracked vocals, frontman Keith Murray singing: "We all recognise/That I'm the problem here", while "Lethal Enforcer" is a sly piece of '80s pop revivalism that somehow channels the smooth synths and echoing drums of Phil Collins without quite tipping over into kitsch. There's the occasional dropped ball here--"Spoken For", a serene, Tropicalia-tinted love ballad is interrupted around the mid-point by some unnecessary, pompous flying-V action--but on the whole, this is smart pop music that's clever but crucially, seldom clever-clever. --Louis Pattison

About The Artist
We Are Scientists shocked themselves and impressed many others with their 2005 debut With Love & Squalor, which sold over 50,000 copies in the US on the strength of dancefloor standbys Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt; It's A Hit; and The Great Escape, as well as nine other songs that, to all appearances, people also liked.

The band spent 2007 at weight-loss camps, alcoholics' dry-out facilities, and a race car school, yet has also found time to pen, record, and road-test their sophomore offering, Brain Thrust Mastery. If W.A.S.'s first album had been far, far better than it was, and of a far more mature style, and if they had then released a limp, unenjoyable second record, and if Brain Thrust Mastery were actually their third album, it would be hailed as 'a return to form', as 'equal to -- in many ways an improvement upon -- the monumental debut'.

We Are Scientists began, in spirit, at Pomona College, in Claremont, California, in the Fall of 1997, when Keith Murray and Chris Cain met at a viewing of Dawson's Creek held in the latter's dorm room. Though at the time they couldn't suspect any of the details of the coming decade, it was apparent to both of them that they would spend many long years riding buses together -- some kind of pro-sports, they assumed. In 1999, freshly graduated and moved to Berkeley, CA, the two started We Are Scientists with little more between them than a dream, a couple of cut-rate instruments, and $1.4 million in lottery winnings.

Nine years later, the band has long-since relocated to more fashionable New York City, seen many countries their parents swore to them were 'myth, accursed myth', and finally dated girls. In the Fall of '07, long-time drummer Michael Tapper retired from the band, and We Are Scientists added a new drummer, plus, in a fit of accumulation, a fourth man on-stage.

1. Ghouls
2. Let's See It
3. After Hours
4. Lethal Enforcer
5. Impatience
6. Tonight
7. Spoken For
8. Altered Beast
9. Chick Lit
10. Dinosaurs
11. That's What Counts

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0016CP39O/?tag=imwan-20

Rawburn · 24 Sep 2004

Lead off single, 'After Hours'

[2008-05-13] We Are Scientists "Brain Thrust Mastery" (Astralwerks)

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