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On Sept. 28, hours before the front of the Mason Hall was filled with students jumping up and down to the music, I sat in the front row enjoying being the only member of the audience. Keith Murray, the lead singer of We Are Scientists (W.A.S.), liad down on the stage and continued to strum the guitar. As they launched into a song a few minutes later, I could not help but feel the rush of the excitement. It's a wrap. Sound check was over. The band members, four of them now - Murray, Chris Cain, Michael Tapper and the new addition of Max Hart, were eager to disperse and enjoy the break before the show. "We don't have to wait for them," said Murray, agreeing to do an interview on his own. As we walked up to one of the stairs in search of some solitude, Murray jokes about being back in school, "After four years of being the teacher, I am ready to learn again." Silently praying under my breath for him not to expect me to teach him anything, I followed him into an empty classroom. As the sound of our voices echoed in the emptiness of the room, I dove into the questions.
Jana Kasperkevic: Are you excited about tonight's show? Keith Murray: Absolutely not. We couldn't be less excited.
So, who is the new addition to the band? Max Hart. He might be in for a while. A lot of our new stuff requires a fourth person. Has he been with W.A.S. long? Four weeks; you can call it an even month.
Do you guys have anything crazy planned for tonight's show? We consider ourselves like an antenna for insanity. We just always like to be open to it, and when we see that the seed of something crazy is presenting itself, we just try to channel it.
You mentioned your "new stuff." I heard you have been working on a new album. Can you tell us anything about it? Yea, I sort of can …
Is it a top secret? It's not a top secret. It's all just incredibly nebulous right now. We don't know exactly when it's coming out. We know it's coming out beginning 2008. We don't know what's it going to be called yet.
There is some talk of titles that you are mulling over on your Web site. We definitely have been putting out a lot of titles, none of which are the actual potential titles. But yeah, we are really bad at making decisions until the last minute. So, we have a couple of titles.
Have you compiled the songs that will be on this new record? We have a bunch of songs recorded, we don't know which ones will actually be on it yet. We know for the most part, but we haven't decided how many songs we want to be on the record. Will this record be similar to the old one? Or should we expect something new? It's pretty different for the most part. I don't think there is anything that sounds like it could have been on the last one. There is some stuff that is not wildly different, you can tell that it's us. It's still pretty dance-y, but less like dance punk.
Is there a reason for this change? I mean, you know, after three years of touring on that album we got a little tired. And especially since there are a lot of bands, even now, still coming out that sound like our record three years ago. So, why even bother? And, you know, we all got into different things since our last [album].
You guys have a tour coming up with Kaiser Chiefs. We are going over to the UK on our own in November and I think the tour with them starts in early December.
Is there any possibility that you will play any of your new songs? Probably it would mostly be the old stuff because nobody has access to the new stuff yet. Although, at that point, it would probably be online, so people might already know the songs. It might leak by that point.
Really? Is that good or bad? I definitely have no problem with album leaks. At this point we don't make most of our money through album sales. We make it through touring and selling merchandise. I personally don't care.
Should we be checking the Web site? I guess we probably wouldn't put it on our Web site that would be pretty incriminating …
Speaking of your Web site, it is not like a typical band site. One of the more interesting characteristics is the advice column. I don't think we have seen anything like this on other band sites. Good advice, though. That's public service. We feel like we got to give something back to the community. So we thought the least we could do is provide illumination and insight.
Is there any advice you would like to give Baruch students? Learn to read. Honestly, I know it sounds ridiculous and outdated, but it comes in handy in the most unusual situations.
What inspired this public service? We just found that everywhere we went people seemed to recognize that we were valuable resource. We just seemed very wise. And we are also always objective, every issue. It got to the point where we were considering just doing tours in United States and Europe just giving people advice, just having seminars in which we advise people. Then we thought we would just rather stay at home, do it online.
Yeah, provide access to everybody, unlike at a seminar. We could have made a pretty penny at an actual tour of advice …but I feel that would be corrupting the purity of the effort. [Laughs]
W.A.S. had been touring for three years. Are you sick of each other yet? We were definitely sick of each other by the time we were done touring. We stopped touring in December to work on the record. We stopped seeing each other every day. So now we are just sort of warming up to each other again.
How does it feel to be back in Brooklyn? It feels good. I wish I were not actually working. I wish we were done with the record and I was just hanging out in the Brooklyn, doing nothing. Isn't that the best way to be in Brooklyn? Just to be idle.
It's changing a lot. It is changing and sometimes you just want to sit back and soak in all the changes rather than to be part of the effort to change it.
Do you enjoy touring or working on the new record better? Or are the two experiences completely different? It is definitely pretty different. By the time we were done touring we were pretty sick of it.
Three years is a long time. It was a really really long time. It was fun most of the time. I like touring. I think maybe I like touring the most out of everybody in the band. We toured nonstop. We would go from one tour to the next. I think we are going to try not to do that this time. I think we are going to ask for a week off between tours.
Just a week? Yea, you don't want to waste too much time hanging out. Over the course of the year a week between every tour tends to add up. We haven't done much writing on all the tours that we did. We only had maybe four songs that we started working on by the time we were done. It was definitely fun. It was a novel experience to write music again. But now I am done writing. I don't want to write anymore. I am just ready to tour.
Do you have a favorite place where W.A.S. went on tour? Our tours in the UK are the best tours. We do the best as the band there. Our shows there are pretty big and we get a lot of radio play. Over here, we are still a little more low key and are mostly played on independent radio stations whereas over there we are corporate sellouts.
Did being a "corporate sellout" change you in any way? Not really. It definitely is sort of nice that we do really well over there. When we are home it's very normal, and when we are over there on tour it's fine and we actually feel like "Oh, your work has actually gotten something." We got the best of both worlds.
Any future plans after the new album? Yea, we will probably be touring for the next two years.
Now, the question all the ladies want me to ask. Are any of you guys single? None of us are single.
I wouldn't think you guys would find time for relationships. Yeah, it's pretty brutal.
Just as Murray is about to tell me about Cain's son, his phone rings. Speak of the devil. I cannot help but smile as Murray assures Cain that he has the interview under control. The conversation then moves onto "Resident Evil III" and whether they can see it before the show. To Murray, it's all about the allure of popcorn in the dark. To me, it's all about not keeping him too long but still getting answers to the last few questions.
Where do you get inspiration for your music? Things like the beautiful sunset, birds singing in the trees, lapping of waves on a shore line, cry of the gull, blast of the steam whistle, the clawing of a cat at the kitchen door will sometimes spark a melody. Starting of an engine, hum of a refrigerator …
So, many things. Almost any noise I guess is my answer. Any noise. Rustling of a paper. [Laughs]
Do you collaborate on the songs as a band or does one of you do music while other one does the lyrics? It sort of depends on who hears that noise. If there is a squeaking of a rocking chair, it depends on who heard that. It works differently each time depending on who heard the inspirational noise. You understand.
Can you teach me how to listen for the inspirational noise? You can't be taught. It's sort of divinely intuitive.
A few hours later, I find myself breathless and being stepped on every once in a while. No longer able to bear the crowd, I move away and watch W.A.S. rock to the end from one of the rows in the back of the Mason Hall. I wonder if they really saw "Resident Evil III." I wonder if the gray in Murray's hair is natural. As they say their goodbyes, all I can think of is that it is a big shame that they are all taken.
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