We Are Scientists - Barbara

Not quite feeling it

Kicking off with the fantastic dance floor filler that is Rules Don’t Stop, We Are Scientists sure do know how to get me in the mood for an album’s worth of dancing around the room. Looking down the track list and the track times I began to think I really was going to get just what I wanted and to be honest they only just about delivered. I think the problem, if I am going to look for one, is that bands such as this never seem to better their debut album, and boy did I adore that debut album. This still has all of the trusted ingredients and now with an added change to the line up, borrowing ex Razorlight drummer Andy Burrows. I’m not sure if he actually had any input into the writing of the music but the drumming is certainly as spot on as you’d expect, in fact in some tracks such as Jack and Ginger they’re quite predominant at times.

Not each track allows for mega any room dancing on this album, and to be honest I’m sure I’ve said it before, but everyone needs a loo break or a sit down at some point. On Barbara the sit down comes a little early for my liking, but it is smack bang I the middle of the album, so perhaps it’s just me being trying. Pittsburgh is a slow track but still has some amazingly cheesy pop ooohhs and ahhs. In a very very surreal and weird way it is a little bit like a watered down Kings of Leon musically. (Perhaps WAS’s Pittsburgh is KOL’s Manhattan!). Several tracks later it’s time for us to rest our feet a little again, with a track called Foreign Kicks. A track that I thought was going to be some fast paced rampant rock out pop track, how wrong was I? Yet gain proving you can never guess a track based on its title alone!

I Don’t Bite is a track around the middle of the album that has something that screams Arctic Monkeys at me. I think it’s the bass line, it feels very familiar but I can’t say it sounds enough like anything for me to make real claims or accusations, it just has that kind of feel, you know what I’m saying! Once Keith begins to sing though and the chorus starts I sit thinking how on earth did the beginning sound like the Arctic Monkeys… then it peeps back in again, that rhythm and I’m all confused all over again. Even the middle instrumental section is defiantly Monkeys, I hope no one reading this is now hating me for saying such a thing, but I don’t think it’s bad on either band personally. It’s actually one of my favourite tracks on the album as it goes.

All in all I’m not overly feeling Barbara, ooo errr missus! (Sorry, but I really couldn’t help it!) There are some tracks that instantly grab me and spin me around, there are some tracks that have grown on me, but then there seems to be a lot of what feels like filler. I hate using that term it always makes me think it’s a bit harsh on the band as if they haven’t tried. But you see the problem is this, there are certain types of bands who will always make music in the same vein and there is only so far you can go with it. Then you have to consider the time and effort that was given to a band’s debut album in comparison to the time that was afforded the band this time around. I can’t say that the band aren’t happy with what they’ve done, I’m sure they are but for me, it really just feels a little tired in places and for me that brings it down from what could have been a very good album to just a good album.

15/06/2010 - Elena