Aaron Pompey
Since 2000, We Are Scientists have been delivering waggish, danceable tracks like “Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt” that earned them talk shows, tour dates, and TV shorts. At the height of COVID, singer/guitarist Keith Murray and bassist Chris Cain kept us all sane with a cheeky podcast masquerading as a track-by-track analysis of We Are Scientist song selections.
On October 8, WAS released its seventh studio album Huffy, which is already drawing high marks. Allston Pudding calls the album “a bombastic collection of high octane bops,” while Parklife DC goes so far as to call it “a bold new chapter for the band.” If new music from WAS just tastes better coming from physical media, you can opt for the multi-paneled vinyl (available in ten colors), cassette (five colors available), sticker sheets, and 20+ full-color graffiti designed by theirs truly. And if all that’s not enough, read on to see what Keith had to say about some of the most resonant topics of the day.
1) If a roach crashed your rehearsal space, would you run or would you kill it?
Probably neither, really. I mean, I don’t *love* roaches, or anything, but I don’t really have the visceral reaction that a lot of people seem to have to them. And I definitely wouldn’t kill it; I’m the sort of dummy that will chase a bug around the house with an empty drinking glass for an hour in the hopes of catching it and letting it out of the house. I recently bought a potted palm tree and discovered that the soil it came in was lousy with millipedes. The palm tree turned out to be diseased (I’m also always buying the crummiest-looking plants at a nursery, hoping that I can save them), and once it died, I felt too guilty to throw away the pot full of millipedes. So now I just kind of have a millipede farm in my house. I feed them beets.
2) Does anyone in the band like to play practical jokes? If so, what’s one of the all-time best ones?
No. Practical jokes are the worst, and if anyone plays a practical joke, they deserve a short prison sentence, at the very least. We once had a tour manager who loved pranks. On the biggest (and last) night of one tour, he decided to prank the support act, which, I guess, is a much-beloved tour tradition for idiots. He greased up the drummers’ drumsticks and pretty much ruined the poor guy’s show. I’m pretty sure that was the very last tour we did with that tour manager.
3) What’s the last gift you received?
My wife just got me a brand new guitar for absolutely no reason, which was very nice. It’s a reissue of a model of guitar that was very popular with glam metal guitarists in the late 80s, and it‘s simultaneously repulsive and gorgeous. I desperately coveted one, but I couldn’t rationalize buying another guitar, much less one visually designed to appeal to the members of Poison. She finally got tired of hearing me dither on about it and bought one for me, herself. That’s a good partner.
4) If you could pick one thing about yourself that you’d like your fans to know, what would it be?
I sometimes also give my potted millipedes watermelon chunks, and I spray them down with a mist of water a couple of times a day. I didn’t even want these stupid millipedes. I wanted a palm tree.
5) What music are you listening to lately?
I’m really enjoying the new album by Magdalena Bay; it’s a very cool bedroom-pop album packed with big hooks. I also initially disliked the new Turnstile record because I thought it just sounded like 311, but then I remembered that I once really liked 311, and so this new Turnstile record turns out to have tricked me into liking both it and 311, again.
For your very own LP, CD, Cassette, or digital copy of Huffy, visit https://100percent.it/WeAreScientists. If not, consider yourself destined for that circle of hell reserved for practical jokers and roach killers.
Huffy – Track List
1 – You’ve Lost Your Shit
2 – Contact High
3 – Handshake Agreement
4 – I Cut My Own Hair
5 – Just Education
6 – Sentimental Education
7 – Fault Lines
8 – Pandemonium
9 – Bought Myself A Grave
10 – Behavior Unbecoming
