Let’s open with a pop fact: We Are Scientists share their name with a song by Cap’n Jazz, a band not entirely dissimilar to WAS. This is, apparently, not where they got their name. I like this pop fact because it simultaneously destroyed and saved my original opening paragraph for this review.

The band’s debut album is a 37 minute lesson in how angular guitar pop should be made. On my second listen of With Love And Squalor (which came a couple of weeks after the first) I spent much of the time trying to work out where I’d been hearing these songs. They did seem awfully familiar. Now, either I’m been subconsciously hearing a lot of these things as I go about my daily business (which is possible) or the songs on this album are so memorable that it only takes one listen for them to embed themselves in your head (this is also possible).

I’m going with the latter because, well, the songs on With Love And Squalor are incredibly catchy and very memorable. Any one of them could be a single, which means selecting Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt and The Great Escape must have been difficult.

This album stands out from pretty much every rock album released this year and feels really fresh. As we draw nearer the end of year polls this should be firmly in everyone’s minds.

Oh, incidentally, they got their name from a conversation with a man at the U-Haul company where they hired a van when they moved to New York.

Label: Virgin
Website: www.wearescientists.com
Release date: 17th October 2005

Tracklist:

1. Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt
2. This Scene Is Dead
3. Inaction
4. Can’t Lose
5. Callbacks
6. Cash Cow
7. It’s A Hit
8. The Great Escape
9. Textbook
10. Lousy Reputation
11. Worth The Wait
12. What’s The Word