Indie royalty We Are Scientists return to Sheffield’s Electric Studios on 3 October as they continue the 20th-anniversary celebrations for With Love and Squalor.
Ahead of the show, Exposed caught up with vocalist and guitarist Keith Murray to talk revisiting 2005, rediscovering old stories and finding their feet in New York’s early-2000s indie scene.
Hi Keith, great to chat to you! You’re continuing the 20th-anniversary celebrations for With Love and Squalor. How does it feel to revisit the record?
It’s funny because in the UK the album actually came out in 2005, and we did a couple of shows to celebrate that last year in the UK. So we fortunately have had a nice run of getting back into the groove of performing the record.
The initial ones felt pretty funny, going back to ourselves from 2005. I was definitely a much crazier person back then.
A lot can change in 20 years! Looking back, what was it like to be part of New York’s indie rock scene as it took off in the early 2000s?
Living in New York in the early 2000s, that scene was so fundamental to Indie Rock blowing up the way it did. We always thought of ourselves as super influenced by Interpol, The Rapture and so many New York bands that were playing in tiny bars.
We were in that world and watching those bands grow and I think that stopped us from understanding the bigger impact of the scene. Because it was our hometown, it just felt like that’s what was going on everywhere.
I didn’t really realise it until several years after our first record when we started meeting young bands that we would hear on the radio and they would say: ‘With Love and Squalor is one of my favourite records.’
That’s ridiculous. It didn’t occur to us to even think of it that way.
I guess when someone recognises your work, it starts to feel more real – a piece of art rather than a project you’ve been working on.
That is absolutely true. Especially with the amount of time it takes to complete a record, like mixing, doing the artwork and doing the track list. With the number of times we listen to it, by the time a record comes out, I almost forget that it exists in that capacity, you know?
Often when I listen back to a record of ours that I haven’t heard in five or ten years, I’m always surprised when I hear the songs that we’ve been playing live, because they always morph a little bit.
On the subject of live performances, the deluxe edition of Qualifying Miles includes some live tracks. What inspired you to record those?
We’ve definitely gotten much more into wild production ideas and our last, maybe three, records feel a little more alive to me.
With Qualifying Miles, our approach was to try to make it feel a little scrappier and make the takes feel less manicured. And so, we were pretty excited about playing as many of those live as possible. The show we recorded was at this really small bar in New York called Union Pool, it was kind of an excuse to say, we want to play and to get those experiences tracked.
Coming back to With Love and Squalor, I imagine you’re not just revisiting the album, but a version of yourselves from 20 years ago.
Part of what is interesting and special to me is that we were a little stupider, we knew less about what we were doing. There are some moments in those records that I now think: I would never have done that. But I’m glad we did. It’s cool and weird.
Our drummer, Keith Carne who’s been playing with us for 12 years now, still every once in a while will listen to our previous work and say, what is happening in this song? This song is very weird. And it is funny to think about because some of that did just come from us thinking, that makes sense to me.
That’s part of the magic of music, I guess – everyone can take something different from it.
Yeah! Even lyrically, when I when I write a song about a specific story, I try to leave out hard facts as much as possible because I like when people interpret things wildly inaccurately. I like the idea that the song has reflected something specific about them rather than about me.
Even when people actively get the lyrics wrong, I kind of don’t want to tell them.
Has revisiting With Love and Squalor brought back any stories from making the album?
When we wrote the record, the band we shared the rehearsal space with was called Bishop Allen. Once in a while, they’ll get together and play a few shows, but they’ve all moved on and have insane lucrative careers in tech and stuff. I ran into the guitarist and his wife a few days ago and told them how we’re about to go on a With Love and Squalor tour. He could not imagine that scenario.
We did a lot of self-booked shows with them. There’s a song called Inaction that specifically talks about slicing open my hand, which I have a scar from, at a specific show in Williamsburg. I was hitting the cymbals and I sliced my hand open. I had to get it stitched up.
I lived with our drummer, Michael, at that point, and we were flying to L.A the next day for a showcase show and he reported that he didn’t think he could go because he’d been robbed on our doorstep on the way home.
Luckily, his driver’s license was in his symbol bag not in his wallet, which had been taken.
You’re returning to the building that previously housed The Leadmill, now Electric Studios. How does it feel to be playing there again?
It’s the venue in Sheffield that I’m sure we played the most, probably by several orders of magnitude. I do remember that there was a long period of them telling us about what trials they were facing.
Whilst the whole transition was happening, we played a venue that we had never even heard of called Crookes Social Club and that place was so cool and so much fun. If I lived anywhere in Yorkshire, I would drive out of my way to go to that bar all the time.
So, in some ways, it’s good to have to move and check out new places. It’s also cool to figure out what the new place is going to be.
Which songs from Qualifying Miles and With Love and Squalor are you most looking forward to playing on this tour?
When With Love And Squalor came out, my least favourite songs to play were the last two songs on the record, which are Worth The Wait and What’s The Word. We rarely do those songs now, so those are the most fun.
With Qualifying Miles, there’s a song called The Big One that wasn’t one of the initial singles. We mainly just started playing it because we thought it was pretty fun and it has become my favourite song from that record now.
We Are Scientists play Electric Studios on 3 October. Tickets are available via wearescientists.com.
