Whilst you were in its throes, the punk-funk explosion of season 2002/3 could seduce you into feeling like you were amid some minor revolution. The Rapture and Radio 4 were certainly primed for takeover, always insurgent, always on message, always dancing, and while Hot Hot Heat were perhaps bubblegum compared to that movement you could just eat them whole they were so sweet. There is the concept of being fashionably late, but that goes out with the burnt vol-au-vents when the gravity shifts on to you the moment you walk in, and everyone else suddenly turned up ridiculously early. We Are Scientists have swung by with a nonchalant shaggy prowess, good looking indie boys with rough style, the strut and overflowing dexterity. Whatever time it is the big hand’s standing to attention. And they’re going to eat everyone else whole.
This is hardcore pop at its punchiest. It is a phenomenally efficient record, like Franz Ferdinand in a proxy way, only much less art school. There’s a new wave similarity with sharp Brits The Departure, especially on the title track, who are incidentally not half as much fun (and besides, We Are Scientists don’t give the impression they’re going anywhere). But going beyond that Keith Murray ratchets sounds from his guitar like Thurston Moore at his ‘Dirty’ peak with anything remotely superfluous sieved out, and you are rocketed to and fro like a bearing in a pinball machine by Chris Cain and Michael Tapper’s ruthless rhythm section.
Opening track ‘’Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt’ is fabulous, like a vanity display of all they are capable of – buoyant beats, slashing, serious guitar and bass playing to stir you into fidgety contortion, bundled into a sweet wrap. But almost immediately it’s trumped by ‘The Scene Is Dead’, like Interpol on amphetamines on quad bikes. And again by ‘Cash Cow’ further on, almost cartoon in its racy temperament, but impassioned and grainy in its solid realism. These glowing appraisals could apply to every track on the record, given its almost unheard of solid gold consistency. Some things are worth waiting for.