This interview defies description. A myriad of weirdness awaits you in this side-splitting conversation (please imagine uproarious laughter throughout much of the proceedings). Also please note there were some instances of everyone talking at once, so while there's a chance a quote may be attributed to the wrong member of the band, you can rest assured it is nonetheless the opinion of the We Are Scientists entity. Things begin as usual with the band musing about my recorder, only it's a different one this time (you can see the tiny thing in some of the photos below). Cord comments in blue.

KEITH MURRAY (guitar/vocals) : Wow… look at that Michael…

ANDY-CORD : I dunno, it actually seems to work better than my old tape recorder so, we’ll see how it goes.

CHRIS CAIN (bass/vocals) : Wow. It’s definitely more portable.

A : It definitely is, it goes anywhere. Okay so it sounds like animals are sort of the order of the day… are you guys familiar with Macguyver? Did you watch Macguyver?

C : Intimately!

A : Really… we’re gonna have a little mini-Macguyver episode here.

K : Oh really? All right.

A : George W. Bush has stolen for his evil ways an ark of kittens, raccoons, and deer…

MICHAEL TAPPER (drums) : An ark of kittens?

A : A veritable ark of kittens, raccoons and deer…

M : A ha!

K : Is it actually an ark or are you just kinda.. Like could it be any…

M : Kittens and deer and what?

A : Yeah well, let’s say a canoe maybe.

C : Raccoons in a canoe, is this one of those, how does he get them across the river, the raccoons will eat the kittens, the kittens will sabotage the deer and that, you know, causes a rise in the system, you know, you can’t leave them alone on the…

A : Close, close. He's actually planning to turn them into expendable soldiers. Isn’t that evil?

K : Uh oh!

A : Okay so you guys have at your disposal a potato...

K : Uh huh.

A : A rubber band...

K : Uh huh.

A : 20 feet of dental floss, a packet of carrot seeds, and access to the Hoover Dam.

C : Is that unlimited access to the Hoover Dam?

M : Was one of the things a parrot?

A : No carrot.

M : Oh a carrot.

A : No no a packet…

C : Can you go through the list just once more please?

A : Okay. You have a potato…

K : A potato.

A : A rubber band.

K : Rubber band.

A : 20 feet of dental floss.

K : 20 feet. Now is it... Waxed?

A : Yep.

K : And is it mint?

A : Mint, yes.

K : Okay.

A : A packet of carrot seeds.

K : Carrot seeds.

A : And access to the Hoover Dam.

K : Hooverdom!

M : What are we doing? We’re trying to kill all these animals?

A : Nooo you’re trying to rescue them!

C : But sometimes the only way to rescue a beast...

M : ...is to make him an expendable soldier.

C : Exactly. Well, I think what we would first… I’m gonna make some progress with this problem and then hopefully we can figure it out. I would say the first step would be, you gotta act fast in this sort of thing cuz he’s on his way to the battlefield with the animals, so you gotta get to the tributary that he’s going down and you gotta block it off with the dental floss. Put a sign up, hang it from the dental floss, that says, you know, river closed, go left, go to the left of the workaround, and that will take him to the Hoover Da.. Hooverdom. To the Hoover Dam. Where we lie in wait. With our master plan. (said evilly, laughter)

A : That’s pretty good.

C : I would say…

K : That’s not a plan, they're hardly free at this point.

A : You’ve still got the potato the rubber band and the carrot seeds?

M : Shoot the rubber band at one of them and then it.. What if you, what if you shoot.. What if you use the rubber band to make a little slingshot and try and shoot the… sunflower seeds at it?

A : Uh, carrot seeds.

C : Carrot seeds. Take aim right into the mouth of the raccoons.

M : Feed ‘em to the raccoons. Cuz you know what that does? It gives them super powers.

C : Yeah it superpowers them, they turn into wolverines. What’s a wolverine? It’s a raccoon that ate some carrot...

M : Sunflower…

C : That got into a carrot packet of seeds. So they’ll handle it, they’ll just go off in the boat.

K : So that’s that’s… we will lose the deer..

C : We’ll lose the deer. And.. What’s the other thing?

M : Cats!

A : Yeah kittens.

K : Oh oh the kittens are long gone. You know what you could do, you could… what else do we have? A potato…

M : Mint floss.

K : We used the mint floss.

C : We used the mint floss to block off the tributary.

A : So you have the rubber band the potato and some carrot seeds And access to the Hoover Dam.

C : The dam, Yeah okay. As they're coming, nearing the dam, you're gonna throw the potato and knock the kittens into the water. And they will…

K : They hate the water...

C : They will find a water kingdom… they will rule their own kingdom. Yeah and they will be happier than we could ever have made them. Now, once we’ve saved them from the imminent raccoon you know berserker twirl, we can go ahead and fire the carrot seeds into the raccoons' mouths, and you see them bulging with new might and you watch their veins sort of pop out of their against the fur. That’s when you spook George Bush by hitting him with the rubber band right in the butt. And he’s like, “Who in the hell? Who in the hell?” You know, and he’s turning around, and he’ll do that for upwards of a half hour. And then you get on the side of the river…

K : (laughing) Hahah trying to figure.. "who is that?” Hahaha.

C : Who the hell… he’s like… okay the river.. And then you go down there a bit and you go… this is sound you have to make to get those deer going, you gotta go, you go… “st st st st st st st st.” Keep in mind that the raccoons right now are in mid transformation and they couldn’t care less about a little cricket click, but the deer, they’re like (makes face) they look around … they leap to their watery death. [Listen to the cricket click]

K : Yeah...

C : Yeah you gotta wrestle them though you gotta hold their head underwater for a little while. They're not that light. Unless it’s a baby deer. The wolverines will handle what’s left. The wolverines will handle clean up.

A : That’s great, that should be a Macguyver episode for sure.

C : It was.

M : We didn’t actually write it, yeah.

C : We got to actually see the pilot. Very few people have.

A : Oh man where do we go from here?

K : Interviews wrapped up!

A : Ah! You talk on your website about soup in the future. And sandwiches. Or the lack of sandwiches. That everything will be soup, which is great because I love soup. But what fate does this spell for the ever-present soup and sandwich combination?

C : It’s gonna be a soup and soup combination now.

K : Yeah you get two bowls of soup. And the soup will actually have bread with lunch meat in it.

C : Floating in it.

K : Yeah. So it’ll ease the transition I think. One bowl of soup will have bread, lunch meat, lettuce, tomato. A side of coleslaw. You’ll still be able to get coleslaw if that’s your question. Yeah I mean this sort of thing has been happening in cuisine a long time. What you now recognize as two scoops of ice cream used to be one scoop of ice cream and some like mud or whatever.

C : Pomade.

K : Pomade. Anything with like a ‘mud’ or ‘mod’ sound in it. They would give you a sort of spatula of it in the palm and then they would give you a scoop of ice cream to wash it down with. That was always pretty gross on its own in one way or another uh and it evolved . And that’s part of the excitement of visiting your local eatery, seeing what will be next. Now it’s two, now it’s double the amount of soup.

A : That makes me happy. You can never have too much soup. [Your last interview] you were talking about wolves. I have a wolf question too sort of. There are a lot of bands these days with ‘wolf’ in the name. Guitar Wolf, Wolf Eyes, Wolf Parade, Raised By Wolves, Wolfmother, etc.

M : We are wolves, the most outrageous of them all.

K : I must agree it’s an outrageous animal.

(silence)

A : Mmhmm. Yeah. Well I was gonna say ...

C : Haha… go on…

A : Do you feel like you are perhaps selling yourselves short in this day and age by not having the word 'wolf' in your band name somewhere?

C : On the contrary, that is exactly how we’ve managed to differentiate ourselves from other bands. (everyone laughs)

A : I see, so that was the master plan.

C : Yes.

A : Okay. If you were to rewrite the lyrics for a We Are Scientists’ version of “My Favourite Things” from The Sound Of Music, what are some of the lines that we would hear?

K : Hmm. I think the only thing that I would change… is one of the lines ’whiskers on kittens?’

A : Yeah.

K : That would be ‘whiskerless kittens.’

M : Whiskerless kittens.

C : Whiskerless kittens.

A : But then they can’t feel where their head is going!

K : Well he’s just gonna have to use his paws. What they do is if theyre approaching a hole that they may or may not be able to get through, see, they put a paw on either side of their head and then they outstretch their hands and they just really gotta keep it very steady and then just kinda go in and out a couple times to find out if it’ll fit their head. So yeah, they’ll be a slower species but uh, you know, easier to wrangle for me. More on my level. Whiskerless cats.

M : More careful.

K : Because if you gotta wash ‘em or punish ‘em and they're running away, you know, once they got to even the cat door, they stop, and regard it, and measure their own head with their paws and then measure the hole… you got’ em. They’re not going anywhere.

A : All right, fair enough.

C : A whiskerless kitten. They’re great.

A : Is there actually a difference between porridge and oatmeal?

C : You’re just wondering.

K : Is this off the record?

M : No it is not.

C : No. But we do market both We Are Scientists porridge and We Are Scientists oatmeal. And what changed so you could… well that’s just the point, there really is no difference. We don’t mind the fact that people buy both.

K : We sell the day-old porridge as oatmeal.

M : It’s quite a different market.

C : Its just that we sell the day old porridge as oatmeal, I don’t even… its very confusing.

K : The difference is a day. A day’s age.

C : In one direction.

A : Okay cage match - the Keebler elves and the Tetley tea guys.

K : And the what?

A : The Tetley tea guys. You know there’s the short guy in the funny hat and his skinny friend…

K : Funny hat and skinny friend! You're talking about Kevin Smith and that other guy…

M : Silent Bob and Jay?

A : Oh yeah those two. Actually that’s a pretty accurate representation.

C : The Tetley tea guys versus the Keebler elves.

M : I’d say Keebler elves.

C : Yeah. They’ve got .. Don’t elves possess magical powers?

M : I think there’s a wizard.

C : There’s something magical about those cookies, I’ll tell you that.

M : Yeah that’s true.

C : You can’t do nothing without at least a little bit of black magic.

K : Tell us, do the Tetley tea guys possess any…?

A : Well they do carry around cups of hot tea.

K : They can scald!

C : Haha scald the elves, but then what happens when they’ve scalded one and then they leap by three? ! (everyone talks and laughs at once, I have no idea what just happened). I’m thinking of gremlins.

A : So the Keebler elves really are gremlins.

C : That’s naked speculation. We’re not gonna … Keebler elves.

K : Yeah Keebler elves.

A : All right, the elves win. Is ‘nobody move nobody get hurt’ based on those giant human-shaped like exoskeleton things from the Alien movies?

C : Oh the moving…

A : My body is your body bla bla bla bla [See lyrics here Come on, it's totally a song sung from the perspective of a massive humanoid robot thing that a person sits inside to work.]. Like the robot… Sigourney Weaver was in...

C : The things that let her like move the boxes and crates around?

A : Yes.

K : Oh yes. Those. Yeah it is. Absolutely.

C : Keith worked in one of those. That’s how he put himself through high school actually. Um, and you were fighting cage matches.

A : With Keebler elves?

C : Anybody. Anybody. He fought for cash, not loyalty.

K : Well, a little bit, a little bit.

K : The title.

C : You liked the glory.

K : And you know any time they would give me the little chalice, the prize, the little chalice thing...

C : Right the chocolate chalice.

K : I’d crush it with my big metal claws. That delighted me.

C : It was chocolate so it wasn’t that tough.

(make cage match noises and talk about Murray getting knocked out)

A : Do you think it’s kinda creepy that that is actually even happening?

K : Chocolate on… oh what’s this?

(I crack out photos of real robot army exoskeleton things like this - no joke, by the way, these are actual prototypes:)

C : Hoooooolyyyy.

M : Wow.

K : Is that like that thing from Robocop?

A : It’s got a gun on it! That’s actually engineered by a buncha dudes in Japan.

C : It doesn’t look like it’s very comfortable to walk in that thing.

K : Yeah if his leg was broken and he tried to lift it up it’d snap under the weight.

K : Gawd. That’s crazy. It’s creepy.

C : Well call it creepy, that‘s evolution. You know. Evolution’s creepy.

M : Is there a person in there?

A : Yeah there's… well I don’t know if there’s particularly in that one but…

M : It’d be nice to have an exoskeleton.

C : What if he was born that way?

A : Are robots cooler or monsters?

C : Honestly... Monsters.

M : Coolness factor?

C : Robots keep cooler. Monsters tend to rage, and they get very overheated. Even at the slightest personal infraction. Monsters.

M : Monsters are pretty awesome though.

C : Yeah they are great, they're really rad.

M : They're cool like, more popular.

C : Yeah but theyre not cool-headed. They are very popular.

M : Theyre like the cool kids.

K : Like the popular kids. People like them. And robots are like the cool kids who tabulate all day.

M : Well…

C : They're really cool-headed.

M : Different meanings of cool.

K : We’re talkin’ like Miles Davis cool.

C : That’s what monsters are. that’s what monsters are. Robots are more like Coltrane cool.

K : Yeah. Brrr.

C : Yeah totally different.

K : That’s what keeps jazz interesting.

A : One more thing I noticed on your website where you talked about a fox in a tuxedo. What is your stance on people dressing up pets and other animals in little outfits?

M : Let’s do it!

C : I’d say full steam ahead.

A : Really?

K : I mean I feel like you know the question can be addressed from different angles, like putting little sweaters and things on dogs, don’t bother. But, if you’re going to a formal occasion and you bring your fox, you're gonna need to put him in a tuxedo.

C : He needs to be in the proper attire.

M : My favourite one is dressing up an animal like another animal. So, dressing up a dog like a cow, which I saw one time. I thought it was great.

K : They were trying to drop it off at an abattoir. They were trying to put the dog down. They knew they wouldn’t kill a dog.

C : They wouldn’t have the stomach for it.

K : But they just might kill a cow.

C : Yeah I dressed my cats as monitor lizards. It involved hours of makeup to get it looking really good but it fuckin’ freaked people out. Cuz monitor lizards that move that fast, can you imagine? Like leaping around from ledge to TV top and then you know…

A : But do they still have their whiskers?

C : Not as, no, well they’re like taped back and then we put a plastic mold over them to sculpt their face like a monitor lizard, get the little eyes and everything.

M : It’s really good.

C : I have to admit it’s a very convincing job.

M : And the payoffs are very high, I mean, it freaked me the fuck out.

C : It’s a very simple equation. It costs a lot of time, a lot of money and supplies but the payoff is huge. I take them, you know what I do is I take them out to Union Square on a crowded Saturday and they run around and people are just fucking beside themselves with horror.

K : But you’ve lost a lot of cats that way when the cops suddenly arrive.

C : Yeah well cats are $20 at the mall so I don’t really have to worry about it.

K : Yeah and the pet store is right on the north side of Union Square.

C : I just go pick up a new cat.

A : Poor cats. So what in your opinion is the greatest scientific discovery of all time?

M : Beeeer. (laughter from all sides)

C : Beer. And skittles. Yep.

K : Beer and skittles.

C : End of tale.

Check out the Ten Questions with WAS.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : June, 2006.