WE ARE SCIENTISTS - Brain Thrust Mastery

We Are Scientists made a name for themselves in 2005 with a thoroughly enjoyable and likeable debut, "With Love And Squalor", which managed to briefly catapult them into the pantheon of the indie-stars most beloved by the genre's audience. At the time people talked about Franz Ferdinand filtered through American college-rock, and there was undoubtedly some truth to it. Since then, an awful lot of water has passed under the bridge: the whole new wave revival has deflated and started dragging itself along with barely any significant records to show for it, and meanwhile the Brooklyn trio has even become a duo following the drummer's departure. And yet their comeback was one of the most anticipated releases out there, proof of a strong interest and reasonably high expectations for the band's (far from negligible) potential.

It pains us to say it, but even We Are Scientists have ended up succumbing to the latest infatuation with an irredeemably mainstream Eighties sound, catching the same paralysing bug that has claimed so many illustrious victims in recent months. Just listen to a museum piece like "Lethal Enforcer" (and the closing "That's What Counts" too) to understand how the band's new course calls for massive injections of voluptuous new romantic languor (also attested by the downright smug album cover), mixed with scattered references to the Bowie epic of "Let's Dance", a-ha, Simple Minds, the mushiest Cure, Prefab Sprout, Style Council and anything else you'd care to throw in. And the funny thing is, the song in question isn't even that bad, quite the opposite.

What's surprising is the sudden softening of the lines and the markedly melodic character running through every track, as if We Are Scientists had suddenly morphed into an indie version of Duran Duran (just listen to the big ballads "Spoken For" and "After Hours"): power-fashion-pop for a new generation, one might be tempted to say, the ideal soundtrack for an "O.C." teleported back to 1986, in a virtuous short-circuit with "Dallas".

The first half of the record, up to the Springsteen-esque "Impatience", holds up reasonably well, and you can sense the band's far-from-accidental cunning in crafting admirable, polished pastiches that, methodological disputes aside, reveal a talent that is genuine within certain limits. Then the album starts falling apart dramatically, shedding good tracks along the way, limping through half-hearted references on the U2/Editors axis (the flimsy "Impatience"), blurry, wobbly synth-pop numbers (the thoroughly limp "Altered Beast", worthy of the most deplorable Bravery, or "Chick Lit", in the wake of B-52's, Tom Tom Club and late-period Talking Heads, which partially manages to save itself at the last minute thanks to the chorus) — tracks that only barely manage to disguise, amid a carnival of second-hand effects and chaotically overdubbed vocals, a compositional streak that is rather elderly and dry in its tastes and in the strategies at its disposal.

The impression is of a "transitional" record, released more out of nagging contractual obligations than genuine necessity, almost as if to fill a gap in output that had dragged on too long. The band certainly comes out of it considerably diminished, even in its ambitions for commercial success (who could get excited about a mediocre track like "Dinosaurs", which isn't even up to the most grating Maroon 5?), and that should give one pause. Worth revisiting in a few years' time (if they're still around).

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16/05/2008