I got a ticket for this gig because I remembered liking the first album and seeing them briefly at the Oxegen festival a couple of years ago and thinking they were a good live band. It was only after buying my ticket that I went and listened to 'Brain Thrust Mastery' the follow up album to 'With Love and Squalor', and an album that I had forgotten to listen to for a long time. For me, the album isn't great, there's no great progression from the last one, which is forgivable but the fact that the songs aren't as good makes the whole thing redundant. So I went along to the gig with a fair amount of trepidation, hoping that the songs would burst into life on stage.
And they did, a bit. First off, We Are Scientists are a great live band. They have fantastic energy, they're funny, entertaining and when they played Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt and Inaction it was impossible not to enjoy it. And the new songs that they played were definitely better live than on record.
The problems were there as well though. They played for 80mins, a decent length but to be honest, it felt too long. Of course, it's difficult when you've only released two albums to play at a high standard for that long and indeed, while most bands would barely pass the hour mark, We Are Scientists should be applauded for playing 80mins. If you were a big fan, you'd probably have loved it. But for me, there were too many sections of little interest where the songs sounded the same and the whole show dragged.
That being said, their energy was fantastic and their between song banter was hilarious at times. If you like the studio albums then you'd love the live shows as they're a step up from the albums. For me, though, there wasn't enough variety over the 80mins to make it a great concert and as I've said, it dragged a lot. I'm hopeful that they'll get back into the studio after this tour and really push on because they need some more good songs to make sure that their strengths don't go to waste.
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