Keith Murray and Chris Cain’s enduring friendship and musical collaboration have been the driving force behind We Are Scientists’ continued success. Since their beginning in the 2000s, the band has evolved and experimented with various influences, their latest project, “Lobes,” a testament to their evolution. Their eighth album demonstrates their ever-growing adaptability with an infusion of 80s-style influence. The pandemic provided Murray and Cain with an opportunity to explore their musical creativity further. They used this downtime to create two stellar albums with distinct themes. “Huffy,” released in 2021, pays homage to their guitar-rock roots and is reminiscent of their earlier work. In contrast, the 2023 “Lobes” offers a more synth and new-wave-inspired sound.
“It was pretty sweet to have tons and tons and tons of time to fiddle with the tracks, especially since it was our first time producing the music ourselves and there were a lot of things we needed to learn.”
Their dedication to their craft has led them to venture on a North American tour spanning over 15 American cities and several Canadian cities. Toronto remains a special highlight for We Are Scientists, as they affectionately refer to their North American tours as “Toronto Tours,” a testament to the relationship they have with their Canadian fans.
“Obviously the highlight of our North American tours is Toronto — I mean, COME ON. We actually refer to them as “Toronto Tours,” the things where we spend weeks driving around North America in a giant 5,000 mile loop. To us that’s a Toronto Tour.
There are a couple of stops on this tour that we haven’t visited in 10+ years — Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City. It’ll be interesting to see how those go, too, to find out whether they can kind of crawl out from Toronto’s shadow.”
What is your perfect road trip song?
Probably “Take It Easy” (The Eagles) or “Summer of ’69” (Bryan Adams) or “City to City” (Gerry Rafferty).
Can you talk a bit on the album’s title, what is the meaning behind Lobes?
“Lobes” started as the name of a fictional discontinued breakfast cereal that was a running joke on our pandemic-era weekly(ish) live streams. The cereal was little black lightly-sweetened spheres, if you want to know. I think that gag had sort of lodged itself in our heads, and when it came time to name the album, we started to feel like it kind of worked as a title. Not totally worked. We don’t really like album titles that totally work — we much prefer “kind of” working. We thought it sounded pretty good with “Huffy,” which had already come out when we named “Lobes,” and we were pitching the two as companion albums. “Huffy & Lobes,” to us, sounded like a pretty affable pair of TV cops, and that’s really the holy grail for album titles.
What songs on the album stand out to you most? What songs do you think will stand out most to fans and why?
Well, the album’s been out since January, so History, in the short term at least, has already spoken. “Less From You” is the number one performer on streaming, and also gets a lot of love at live shows. “Human Resources” feels like a close second, at least when we play it live, and that’s definitely one that we imagined, early on, was going to be a HUGE HIT.
What bands and musicians have inspired you most over recent years?
We’re Weezer fans from the beginning, and remain pretty enthusiastic about that project. I wouldn’t say we identify with them, particularly, but they’re sure fun to follow. More recently we’ve been super-impressed by a lot of the stuff coming out of the PC Music galaxy, especially Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek. Just remarkable stuff — poppy as hell yet somehow also restless and urgently questing for new sounds.
Having now made eight albums total, where would Lobes rank? Is it your favourite work yet?
It’s our favorite, yes, for sure. Part of that, admittedly, is that it’s new, so we’re the least used to it. Its mysteries are still revealing themselves to us, particularly when we play the songs live. Of course that also means that it’s lacking “old friend” status, which some of our early tunes benefit from, and yet I think we’re pretty content to say that the “Lobes” songs are better. I mean, we’ve been doing this a while — it would be sad if we were getting worse at it. Of course, inspiration can wane, subject matter can grow thin and brothy, the creative mind can calcify and crack and trickle out your ears. But we find the world to be a construct of infinite fascination, so our brains are still simmering like hot oil, and also crackle and hiss when they get rained on.
You’ve been together for over 20 years, what do you think has kept you strong together all this time?
We do enjoy each other’s company. That’s a big help. Probably if we didn’t, we’d have called it quits by now. And, of course, there’s the knowledge that if we complete another album, we get to go back to Toronto.
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