Keith Murray of We Are Scientists Explains Their Dichotomy and Dissects the Meaning of ‘Helter Seltzer’

Matt Matasci

Breaking out in the mid-’00s with the slightly spastic post-punk revivalism of “With Love and Squalor,” We Are Scientists have managed to carve out a sizable niche in the indie world. Despite having not broken through into the mainstream music scene in the United States, they are among the more popular rock groups in the United Kingdom. With a career that spans a decade and a half, the band has released five studio full-lengths, the latest coming just a few months ago in the form of “Helter Seltzer.” Without abandoning their core energy, the band has shed some of their youthful punk attributes and adopted more pop sensibilities in their songwriting as demonstrated by their new single “Buckle.” Before heading out on tour, singer Keith Murray took the time to speak with EV about the new record and the band’s live approach.

Your website calls “Helter Seltzer” We Are Scientists’ “freakiest” record to date. Did you set out to create such a “freaky” album or did it just come naturally?

(laughs) . . . Yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever gone into a studio with a real master plan. Well, at least we’ve never actualized any master plan that we have created. We definitely are men who build by our guts . . . so I definitely don’t feel like anything about our recording process is generally very calculated. I guess that is the good part about having a producer; theoretically, that will be their job. Whether or not they let on that they are playing puppet master in that way, it comes down to their techniques. But yeah, we sort of feel like we should go out of our way to not make a generic record. In that sense, I think we are sort of always trying to maximize the character and idiosyncrasy of the recordings and we aimed to make a “freaky” record.   

You guys have always been noted for having a great sense of humor. Do you think staying loose is important to connect with your audience?

You know, I don’t think as a rule it is. I mean, I guess there are . . . as is demonstrated by the huge variety of bands that have gigantic followings. Some bands achieve that by having a very personal affect on stage; some bands have an incredibly self-serious affect on stage; some artists have a totally fictionalized version of themselves. So, I guess there’s no real template. I think for us, having that sort of “guard being let down” and the veil between the audience and the band being pierced, I think it is important for us. But I don’t think we’ve ever been interested in or good at playing the role of anyone other than ourselves on stage. For us, fostering that loose, communal sense on stage is important for the liveliness of the show.  

Speaking of your sense of humor, “Helter Seltzer” is an awesome name for an album. Is there a deeper underlying meaning or did you just think it sounded great?

There are several different layers of meaning in it, which I don’t mean to sound pretentious because some of those layers are incredibly flimsy. The initial premise or derivation of that title was legitimately just that as a band we have recently become very, very addicted to seltzer . . . largely through our drummer Keith Carne and our tour manager Ian McCarthy, both of whom sort of came into the group already very fixated on seltzer. So in our touring with them both, Chris and I got deeply, deeply infected by their seltzer lust. I think the name honestly just came out of us just thinking it would be hilarious to reference our seltzer mania in the album title.

But I think we would not have used it if we hadn’t also felt like it also had larger applications to the band and specifically this album. We’ve always felt like our music kind of blends these different elements of the idea that we try to write pop songs, but we generally present them in a skuzzy, slightly ramshackle, very live band sense rather than the standard glossy hyper-produced pop. In that sense I think we sort of felt like the dichotomy of something being very helter-skelter and also very effervescent like seltzer made it an applicable title. Now, we didn’t devise that phrase to specifically denote that, but we thought it was pretty funny that after we had come up with that phrase, we saw that meaning in there. We sort of drew meaning out of that title once we had stumbled upon it.

So many bands that rose to prominence around the same time as We Are Scientists have fizzled out; What is your secret to sustained success?

I don’t know, I think a big part of it is that Chris and I are still just very close friends who enjoy hanging out with each other under any circumstance. So being on tour with [each other] is still a lot of fun. I think if I was touring with people that I actively . . . not even actively, sort of people that I kind of don’t really care either way about, I probably wouldn’t really want to be doing it all that often anymore. We’ve been on tour so many times and playing shows is awesome but touring is sort of a grind. It’s definitely not the hardest job in the world but it’s a pretty difficult lifestyle; just like never having your own personal space and never being in the same place for a night or two and never being in your own bed. So I think what makes it sustainable is that the people [who] you are fundamentally ‘trapped’ with are people [who] you like and look forward to hanging out with. That definitely has a huge part in why we are personally still doing it. I think that it is nice that it is still a sustainable career that other people seem to be interested in enjoying as well. And why that is, I don’t know! It’s because we’re amazing . . . . We’re an amazing band! (laughs)

As your sound has evolved and changed over the years, has that changed your approach to live performance?

It has a little. When we started I think we were very interested in just having the most energetic, loud, kinetic show possible. We spent a lot of time crafting songs that we thought were really good songs on their own but the live show was about saying that . . . we’ve written these very good songs on their own, let’s put on a rambunctious, fun show. I think that is still part of us; We’re still the sort of band where we’d rather you leave the show saying “Wow, that was really fun” rather than saying “Wow those guys are truly amazing artists or craftsmen musicians.” I think we would rather the idea be like “Holy shit, we just had a great time; that was great and so much fun” rather than anything else. I think that is still a major goal in our live show. Having been doing this so long, there’s part of you that is interested in trying different things. I think in general, our live tempos, which when I listen back to some of our early shows, I realize they were incredibly frenetic. We are more interested in dynamics more than we used to be.

For those who have attended your shows in the past, is there anything different they can expect from this tour versus older ones?

Yeah, I think that these songs are sort of our most interesting. Part of what is different about our show now is that we spend a little more time trying to – honor is a totally ridiculous word to use, but I’m using it because I am lapsing on any other terms. (laughs) But sort of just honoring the songs as they are on the album and kind of letting the songs be showcased a little bit rather than having it being loud and ramshackle and knowing that we have a good foundation for the show. I think now in a lot of ways we think well we should try to demonstrate what is awesome about this song specifically that we’ll be playing for the next three and a half minutes. So we do spend a lot more time thinking about that. With Keith Carne on drums, we are pretty damn tight and he is a jazz-school graduate, so he’s very interested in arrangements and thinking about the presentation of the songs. Our onstage approach to the show has remained pretty consistent. There’s still a lot of Chris and I talking to one another and the crowd. It’s still about being fairly kinetic.

For those who have never been to a We Are Scientists show, how do you think they differ from other band’s performances?

I feel a response that I often get is that we tend to be much more present . . . . There’s something very communal about our shows in a way that seems fairly unusual. I think we are much more personable up on stage than most bands tend to be. Occasionally to a fault, we do sometimes like to ramble with one another. Something about our show is that we like to make it feel as if everyone in the room is part of this community that’s come together. It’s something that we’ve said. We want it to feel like we threw a party and invited all these people to come and we also happen to be the band playing at that party as well. Everyone is our guest and we are the hosts and it’s up to us to make everybody feel, not only comfortable at the party but that we wanted them specifically to come and have rewarded them for having come.