Cymbals Eat Guitars seem to be spending a lot of time in Britain, having played a series of dates in the UK in February in addition to opening for the Flaming Lips during Wayne Coyne’s band’s London residency last November. But earlier this month they started their first major headlining tour of North America in Philadelphia. The second date of the tour was a sold-out show on 06 March at D.C.’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel. (If you’re interested, I had a brief question and answer session with their newest member, bassist Matt Whipple, the first week of March, and you can read it here.)

The two openers for the night were fellow New York bands – the electro-folky Freelance Whales and the experimental pop band Bear in Heaven. I’ve had the misfortune of missing out on Freelance Whales twice – once, when D.C. traffic wreaked havoc on me and Mary Beth’s plans to arrive early for the Fanfarlo concert early last December at Iota (when FW was supporting the London folk pop band) and twice, they had sold out the smaller Black Cat Backstage floor when I was on the bigger, upstairs floor covering We Are Scientists.

This Saturday night, the Whales played to an appreciative crowd, many of whom knew and sang along to songs on their forthcoming, self-released debut album ‘Weathervanes’. The band is an interesting juxtaposition of traditional folk (banjo, accordion) and new-fangled instruments (synth and keyboard) as well as the unusual (xylophone, watering can used as percussion). Note: I thought they were great and the current hype around them is insane, you’d be remiss not to at least have a listen.

Bear in Heaven was the wild card of the night for me, not knowing anything about the Brooklyn band. I thoroughly enjoyed the combination of voice, guitars, synth, and drums coming together to create some atmospheric masterpieces that at times could be called rock and at times could be called dance. You would not have guessed this looking at the three men on stage displaying various stages of beard and mustache. Fun stuff like ‘Wholehearted Mess’ surprised me with the band’s brand of experimental dance. (Is that even a genre?)

When 23.30 rolled around and it was time for the headliner Cymbals Eat Guitars, I was feeling a little apprehensive. I hadn’t been in such a testosterone-fueled, excitement-filled room since seeing the Hold Steady at the 9:30 last summer. The quartet’s sound is tight, sounding better than ever. They powered through several of the songs like ‘Under a Hazy Sea’ (featuring Joseph D’Agostino’s emotional vocals and jangly guitar) and the jaunty ‘Indiana’ from their Memphis Industries’s debut ‘Why There Are Mountains’ and played some new ones for us as well.

I’m pretty sure they could have sold out the next biggest venue in town, the Black Cat, but my feeling is that the rock of Cymbals Eat Guitars feels right in a sweaty, packed place like the RnR. The band heads to South by Southwest this week and I’m sure they will wow the Austin crowd just like they wowed us here in D.C.

After the cut: more photos!

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Note: There are no live photos in this review because there were absolutely no cameras allowed at the gig, sorry!

Reading my gig reviews, you could easily make the assumption that I say that every gig is one of the best I’ve ever seen, but I promise you, this has just been a spectacularly good year for gigs! Sunday night I had the pleasure of seeing everyone’s favorite pocket-sized jazz musician, Jamie Cullum, and opener Imelda May at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. I went into this sold out gig worrying that there was no way it’d live up to my expectations – I’ve been trying and failing to see Jamie Cullum live for about 5 years now, and I wanted it to be something extra special to make up for the fact that I had to miss watching the Oscars to see it. Basically, if it was anywhere short of Jamie’s amazing performance in his ‘Live at Blenheim Palace’ DVD, then I was going to be thoroughly disappointed. Fortunately, both Jamie and Imelda completely blew me away!

Dublin rockabilly songstress Imelda May played a powerful, vibrant 40-minute set to a nearly packed venue, and had everyone dancing along. She has a deep, raspy, soulful voice that captivated the audience, and she seemed to be having a lot of fun up on stage. She played more than 10 songs,  including ‘Johnny Got A Boom Boom,’ ‘Big Bad Handsome Man,’ and ‘How High the Moon.’ One of the best parts of her set was her wonderfully cheeky lyrics, like “Count my fingers, one and two / one of them is just for you / Count my fingers, one, two, three / the one in the middle’s to you, from me.” With the backing of her band, including a drummer, electric and acoustic guitarists, and a double bass player, Imelda thoroughly warmed up the crowd for Jamie.

Jamie Cullum is an absolutely fascinating and captivating performer. The energy with which he throws himself completely into his performance is just mesmerizing. He can switch from slow, brooding intensity to manic and impossibly intricate piano solos in the blink of an eye. At the end of his packed 2-hour set, I was amazed that he could still stand, he’d put so much energy into his performance.

As if his music wasn’t captivating enough, he was also hilariously entertaining between songs. In the first non-sung words out of his mouth, he said “Hello, my name is Justin Bieber.” Later he quipped, “Just picture me as Johnny Depp, I’m sure it’s not the 1st time…why are you laughing?” At one point he described the double bass player, Chris Hill, as a monster and said “That man has a fist full of sausages!” – I’m just going to  assume that’s a good thing in Jamie’s world.

But back to the music: not one of the songs got away without a generous helping of improv – I mean, come on, he is a jazz musician, after all. During crowd favorite ‘Frontin’,’ Jamie used the piano as one giant percussion instrument while beatboxing and singing. Even the slower songs like ‘What A Difference A Day Made’ were a big hit with the crowd. We all tried (and failed) to sing along, prompting Cullum to say “It’s hard trying to sing along with a jazz singer, isn’t it?” He had the crowd completely in the palm of his hand, whether he was making them scat along during ‘Wind Cries Mary,’ sing along and jump up and down to ‘Mixtape,’ or listen in complete silence to ‘Gran Torino.’ During the encore, he even convinced the crowd to sing the entire second verse of ‘All At Sea,’ and it sounded gorgeous.

But the indisputable highlight of the show was also its most unexpected. Toward the end of his set, Jamie had the band bring all of their instruments to the front of the stage, and instructed the crowd to part down the middle. The band then launched into Justin Timberlake’s ‘Cry Me A River,’ and the crowd went mental. Over top of that, Jamie sang the jazz standard ‘Cry Me A River’ off-mic, and then jumped down off the stage with his horn players, and proceeded to sing a capella from the middle of the crowd – simply amazing and completely unexpected. There’s really nobody like Jamie Cullum for genre-bending, mad scientist-type brilliance. This gig will be hard to top!

After the cut: Jamie Cullum Set List!

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Set list and photos courtesy of Mary Chang, USA Editor and gigmate extraordinaire.

Somehow, after years of loving British music, neither member of the D.C. branch of TGTF had ever been to a Muse gig, so when they announced they were coming to the Patriot Center, we knew we had to go. Having miraculously managed to get two general admission floor tickets (it sold out within 2 hours of the tickets going on sale), we headed down to the venue nice and early and staked out a spot on the left side of the stage just one row back.

Stood in front of what looked like three skyscrapers, opener Silversun Pickups went on right on time and played a solid 45-minute set, including ‘Substitution’ and ‘Panic Switch’. They weren’t quite my style but they sounded good and they thoroughly entertained the crowd as they filed into the 10,000-seat arena. The best part of their set, for me, was lead singer and guitarist Brian Aubert’s quips between songs, like “this is our second show on this tour – the band, not you guys – you don’t remember last night? You were reeeaaalllly drunk.” Plus, they get bonus points for having a female bassist and being unfazed by such a huge crowd.

After a 45-minute break, during which Mary and I were treated to what I shall refer to as a “smoke machine facial,” the light’s dimmed to thunderous applause from the now-packed arena. In quite possibly the best gig opening I have ever witnessed (and I’ve been to a LOT of gigs), they dropped the building-looking cloths to reveal each of the 3 band members in the middle of their own massive column with video screens on all sides, at least 6 metres up from the stage. With that, they launched straight into ‘Uprising,’ whipping the crowd into a chanting, fist-pumping frenzy. Throughout the show, they raised and lowered the bottom half of these columns, allowing the band to either seem to float above the crowd or to walk around the massive oblong stage.

These video columns were the biggest part of the set, but every aspect of the setup was spectacular: there were spotlights, lasers, a piano with a see-through lid and a rotating drum kit (not to mention Matt’s bedazzled leather jacket and trousers). But the real highlight for me was during the amazing ‘Time is Running Out,’ when they released giant balloons into the crowd that looked like eyeballs. When the balloons popped, they showered the crowd with red confetti. It was so much fun trying to hit the balloons that I nearly knocked off Mary’s glasses in a fit of joy.

They played all the crowd favorites, like ‘Supermassive Black Hole,’ ‘Resistance’ and ‘Starlight,’ plus ‘Knights of Cydonia’ in the encore, and in every song Matt, Chris and Dom played insanely well while acting like it was nothing – they’re just that badass. Their playing on ‘New Born’ was particularly spectacular, and Matt Bellamy has a surprisingly versatile and powerful voice live. In one of my favorite moments, Matt brought out his keytar and strutted about the stage playing the incredibly sexy ‘Undisclosed Desires’ (however, Mary argues that ‘Plug in Baby’ is far sexier). And Muse’s show is undeniably sexy: it’s the result of what happens when you successfully straddle that fine line between confidence and arrogance. They are extravagant and over-the-top, but they don’t take themselves too seriously, and because of that, the show is so much fun for the audience. It’s impossible to come out of a show that fun and not be entirely smitten with the band, so if you have not seen Muse live yet, then by all means, GO!

After the cut: set list and more photos!

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“Lovely to see you again. Hope you’re doing okay.” Those were the first quiet words of hello from Editors’s Tom Smith to the crowd at the sold-out 9:30 Club Sunday night. That may have been a tentative introduction but the band’s performance was anything but tentative. They played a nearly 2-hour set to an audience of adoring fans in love with their old hits like ‘Munich’ and “Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors’ as well as the synthy goodness of newer tracks like ‘Papillon’ and my personal favourite off ‘In This Light and On This Evening’ (released last year), ‘You Don’t Know Love.’

It was really interesting to watch the contrast of material from their first two albums made with traditional rock band instruments against the new songs, heavy on synths. The best moment of the night for me was ‘Bricks and Mortar’, watching lead guitarist Chris Urbanowicz leave his guitar behind for a moment to plug away at a synth, with Smith following not far behind to join him so they were pressing buttons feverishly in tandem. Electropop awesome sauce.

Joining the dark princes of English indie rock on this tour were the Dig, a rock ‘n’ roll quartet and the Antlers, a more fuzzed out, dream / experimental pop band. Of the two, I preferred the Dig, because they played straightforward, feel good guitar rock that isn’t showing up on American radio stations as it should. Songs like ‘You’re Already Gone’ and ‘I Just Want to Talk to You’ point to exactly what is wrong with most rock music today. It’s missing bands like this that make exciting but not over the top rock ‘n’ roll. The Dig is set to self-release their debut album ‘Electric Toys’ in America in late April.

MP3: The Dig – You\'re Already Gone

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But it’s not like the Antlers really needed my endorsement anyway. The Brooklyn trio have a definite following in Britain, with their early March gigs at London’s Union Chapel and Brighton’s Hanbury Ballrooms already sold out. Songs from last year’s ‘Hospice’ are brooding pieces for the thinking man, somewhat challenging for the average pop music fan but worth the time seeking out if what you’re after is thoughtful lyrics with an interesting instrumental backdrop. I’ve heard them been compared to Fleet Foxes, Cold War Kids, Passion Pit, and I can see the reasons behind these comparisons, but I’d throw in possibly Beach House and Late of the Pier for good measure. If any of these bands named ring your bells, the Antlers just might be for you.

After the cut: photos and set lists.

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As we walked up the stairs to the main floor of DC9, the loud booming of Editors’ synthtastic ‘Papillon’ greeted us. I could tell this was going to be one great night. To be fair, Liberation Dance Party is always full of English electropop, but this time, VV Brown was in the house. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how many people in Washington knew who she was or what songs she was famous for; a lot of people go to Liberation for the open bar and to socialise, not necessarily dance or pay attention to a live act, if there is one. But I was proud of my D.C brethren for selling out DC9 and for the amazing, raucous reception they gave Brown and her band, and deservedly so for their short but high energy set.

VV Brown is one gorgeous woman, now joining Twiggy and Danii Minogue as a face on Marks and Spencer’s future adverts. So I’m not sure why she chose to obscure her face with a glittery, feathered mask. But I’ll admit it did lend an air of celebration to the festivities. Whether singing into her microphone or megaphone, beating on a conga drum, shaking a jingle stick, or playing keyboards, she looked right at home on the DC9 stage. She mainly played songs from her debut album, ‘Travelling Like the Light’, released last year, but there were some surprises. Brown asked the audience if they liked hip hop, and would it be okay if they played a cover of ‘Best I Ever Had’ by American star Drake. Was she kidding? This was Washington after all, chockful of urban radio stations. The fans ate this cover up.

‘Shark in the Water’, Brown’s upbeat love song that was supposed to be the closer of the night, became a massive crowd singalong, two boys next to me particularly keen on singing along to the chorus loudly and looking like they were going to make a move to jump on stage to touch Brown. When fans cheered for an encore, Brown and her band returned to the stage and played a song that she admitted really was an improvisation – I don’t think any of them had expected to receive such kudos from the audience. Her post-gig Tweets indicated that she was really touched by the reaction to her music and I’m glad: their set was absolutely blinding.

Editor’s note: this review would have been a lot more detailed, had an overzealous fan not snatched my notes in a fit of urgency at the end of the show. Mary Beth surmised that he grabbed the closest piece of paper – my notes – in order to get an autograph from VV. What an odd incident! Note to VV Brown fanatic: if you still have my notes, I’d like them back please. You have my contact information, please get in touch. Thank you.

On the train ride home, Mary Beth and I recalled the great songs that were played at the dance before VV Brown played, because it really was a night of English pop/dance epicness. Bill Spieler told me the complete list should go online at the dance party’s Web site sometime later this week, but I’ve included a list of the great songs we could remember. So after the cut: in addition to the usual photos, I’ve included a list of songs that were played on the night so you can have a feel for the epicness.

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After the La Roux show scheduled for last Wednesday (10 February) was postponed to 25 July due to the latest round of snow here, I was so worried about the We Were Promised Jetpacks boys making it safely to the States that I sent them a Tweet to check on them. Wednesday night they Tweeted me back from New York with the following exultant message: “don’t worry, we made it in yesterday!” Single gals like me wince just thinking about Valentine’s Day. This year however I was really, really chuffed because I knew I’d forget all about this when captivated by the Scottish rockers the night before V-Day, rocking out to their tunes at a sold-out show at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel in Northeast. They’d played an opening slot here last October with comparatively older veterans of the music scene, Fat Cat labelmates Brakes and the Twilight Sad. But Saturday night, the Jetpacks were headlining.

First up on the night were Typefighter, a local Washington folk/pop quintet that looked and sounded oddly like Fanfarlo. This description is not intended to be a dig at either band; I just thought it was eerie for two bands to be playing such similar music, with four guys and a girl multi-instrumentalist / backing vocalist, having been put together separately but divided by an ocean. Speaking of oceans, Typefighter enjoys singing about them, as evidenced by the song ‘Ocean Floor’. Another great song is ‘Worth the Wait’, featuring the banjo and lead singer Ryan McLaughlin’s twangy, countrified, folky voice. Given the popularity of Fanfarlo, Mumford and Sons and Noah and the Whale, I imagine they would do extremely well in Britain. They’re currently unsigned but I imagine with their promising talent, they’ll be scooped up soon.

Bad Veins, a duo from Cincinnati, Ohio, played second. I’ve seen some duos at the RnR come up with some ingenious solutions to only having two members. In Bad Veins’s case, they employ a third “member”, an antiquated reel-to-reel tape player they’ve christened ‘Irene’, and Irene comes through with orchestration that would of course be impossible with just two humans. And as if having Irene wasn’t enough, singer Benjamin Davis also employs a telephone setup, so he can sing into the receiver and the resulting sound is just like you’d imagine someone singing to you down a telephone line. The backbeats are courtesy of drummer Sebastian Schulz, whose driving rhythms along with Davis’s vocals and guitar combine to make some great sounding rock. I thought hard about how to describe what they sound like – the drumming is as manic as Keith Moon’s in the Who, but Davis’s vocals on top can be angsty as Glasvegas’s James Allan but can sometimes be shouty.

Half past 11, so that meant it was finally time for We Were Promised Jetpacks, the band I had come all this way to see. I was bouncing off the walls the day in December when their first North American tour was announced. The band is so powerful instrumentally live and lead singer/guitarist Adam Thompson’s vocals are so cutting that this is not a band you can watch and simply sit and stare. There is something so incredibly liberating to singing along to ‘Quiet Little Voices’ playing in your bedroom. But it’s incomparable to the effect of the “oh oh ohs!“, multiplying the feeling a couple thousand times when you’re stood in front of Thompson, singing along with him and the other similar-minded fans squeezed into a tiny club like the RnR. Fantastic.

While stage banter is not the band’s forte, Thompson thanked the appreciative crowd for their applause between songs, and he must not have forgotten being mocked in October for being from Scotland (an audience member then equating Scotland as if being out in the wilderness with no running water) because when asked to tell a Scottish joke, he responded good-naturely with a wry smile, “a Scottish joke? Fuck off!” This of course caused everyone in the club to laugh.

But we weren’t there to laugh, we were there to be rocked by the Jetpacks. The band powered through 10 songs, with ‘It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning’ and ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ being major highlights for me. The set also included two new ones that might be on a new EP, but I can’t tell you for sure because it’s not on Fat Cat Records’s Web site yet, and the merch table was gone by the time the show was over and I couldn’t find any of the band to ask them about the new release. (The disappearing merch table is one of the few complaints I have about the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel, as I couldn’t get Miike Snow merch last September there either.) In short: it may have been Valentine’s Day, but thanks to this amazing show, I walked out into the cold Washington night with a spring in my step.

After the cut: photos and set list.

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And here is the second half of my backstage interview with We Are Scientists prior to their show on 21 January at D.C.’s Black Cat. Just like the first half of this interview, we had to overcome interruptions and background noise throughout. But this did not distract Chris Cain (bass / backing vocals) from being so candid about his opinions on American vs. UK music media and both him and Keith Murray talking excitedly about their ‘bands to watch’ picks for 2010. Listen below to the audio of this half of the interview, with the transcription below and beyond the cut.

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Editor’s note: If you missed part 1 of this interview, walk this way. Many thanks again to Chris and Keith for their time and Zane for helping me set this up.

So the first advertisement I ever saw of your band was in the gigs listing section in the back of a copy of MOJO.
Chris: Ok.
If you were wondering, the feature article was about Led Zeppelin.
Chris: Yes.
And it was of a tour were on basically going around England basically in support of ‘With Love and Squalor’ with the cats. And with MOJO being an English music magazine, I automatically and wrongly assumed your band had to be English. Do you get that a lot?
Chris: We used to get that. I feel like we haven’t recently.
(ignore the Black Cat staff member talking about stickers and removing WAS’s dinner plates)
Chris: So yes, we did used to. On the first record I think we got it quite a bit. I guess people have gotten to know us better. We used to get that, it used to, uh, be a surprise to people that we were American. Like we’d start talking to a fan after a British show or something, when you’re outside and they’d be like, (affecting bad English accent) “are you a fuckin’ American?” And like, “uh, yeah, like, what are you talking about? Yes.” (then back to English accent) “Oh man, I thought you were British!” “Uh, nope!”
The Brits and Europe in general have really taken a shine to you. What do you think it is, your sophistication? Your droll humour?
Chris: I mean, the looks don’t hurt, uh…let’s see. You know, I don’t know. Part of me thinks it was just haphazard timing essentially, when we happened to get a bite in the UK before we did in the U.S. We got a little bit of radio play, and we decided to really push it and try to support it, we toured the hell out of it. This was 2005, summer. Uh, we had just finished the record in the spring, we did South by Southwest [a Austin, Texas music industry festival], uh, Steve Lamacq came to our show there. He’s a big British tv..er…radio guy.
Yeah, I’m sort of friends with him. Sort of. I talked to him on the radio once…
Chris: Nice, he’s awesome. He started playing ‘Nobody Move…’, that we toured with Editors, we toured by ourselves, we went there like three times that summer. We released our album in the fall. And basically did not have a lot of time for the U.S. So that whole first record, we… I think we toured the U.S. once that record. Or maybe one and a half doing a couple coastal things as well. But…and the label quickly focused its money, like its expenditures on over there because that’s where it was happening. Um, and it’s like your fate is chosen at that point. You know, the second album comes along, obviously we’re going to privilege the UK because that’s where we would play bigger shows, you know, that’s where the business is. We’ve never focused on the U.S. in the same way. And it’s harder to focus here too.
Yes, I saw some impassioned pleas from British fans on your Facebook page wanting you guys to play there.
Chris: Yeah.
Now presumably you guys will be playing, hitting UK music festivals.
Chris: We will be, yeah.
And you’re playing South by Southwest in March?
Chris: We are, yes.
So you mentioned you played there before. What are your feelings on the festival from like a band / business perspective? Because some people have told me it has actually changed focus, from where it would formally be for labels would go to discover bands, and some people have gone and have told me that it’s changed, it’s become more of a fan’s festival.
Chris: South by Southwest? Yeah, I mean, [now] it seems like there are still a lot of industry people there for sure. But obviously, there are a lot of bands playing who don’t need to be signed. (scoffs) Like very big established acts. So, in a sense it’s like a strange hybrid I think, there are still a lot of unsigned bands there showcasing, and very likely, people do still get signed there. Uh, yeah, the aspect of the festival that has grown substantially over the last 5 years is the more traditional festival side which is established acts coming in and playing for decent money in front of, essentially, fans.
And from the fan’s perspective since you’ve been there before, I’m presuming you’ve seen bands there. What acts do you recall impressed you there?
Chris: Let’s see…I saw the Cribs there, I’d seen them before though…but…they’re always good.
Like I mentioned to you they were here on Tuesday.
Chris: Yeah, very good. Let’s see…I saw there the New York Dolls, that was the only time I’d ever seen them. They were not good. Uh…you know what, didn’t break my heart though. Part of the problem with South by Southwest is that you always drink so much, that your take-away is very minimal in terms of memories! (laughs) You don’t actually go home with too many…
Is that something I should …I’m not going this year…something I should avoid in future years?
Chris: Well yeah, if you want to…
I’m not going this year, but I’ll probably go to CMJ…
(I am taken away, temporarily, to get ‘processed’ by venue staff. Don’t worry, this was actually a lot less painful than it sounds. And then I return…)

So we were talking about, uh, South by Southwest and music festivals…what have been your favourite music festivals to play? Anywhere in the world.
Chris: Um, Reading and Leeds has been a, been a great festival for us. We’ve done it three times. And um, it’s been cool to watch that specific festival get better and better for us. Uh, we’ve had really fun, random festivals… (asks Keith) What’s the Valencia one?
Mary and Keith at the same time: Benicassim!
Chris: Benicassim. Yeah yeah. That was an amazing one a couple years ago.
Scorchingly hot?
Chris: It was pretty hot, yeah I don’t remember it being that off-putting though.
Keith: (to Chris) We played at night.
Chris: Oh yeah. But even walking around the crowds during the day. A festival that I remember being brutal down there was the Madrid leg of…
Keith: Parking lot?
Chris: What is that festival called? Summer…
Keith: Primavera!
Chris: Primavera, yeah. Primavera is Madrid…there is a Barcelona show and a Madrid show.
Keith: It was an amazing line-up, terrible location.
Chris: The Barcelona show has a great location.
Is there a lot of dance music at that festival?
Chris: There…I think there was had a dance tent.
Keith: For Spain, it was very non-dance.
Chris: It was definitely a rock festival. Spain is weird, they have these great rock festivals. If you sell a 1,000 rock records there, you’re like huge. Like, they can’t sell rock records there. It’s just a category. They basically buy traditional Spanish music or like, the modern off-shoots from that. Rock music does not move there. And yet you go to these festivals and 10,000 people show up for your set, it’s weird. Don’t understand it.

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This boffin girl was allowed into the We Are Scientists’s secret backstage realm for an interview with the band shortly before they were due on stage at Washington’s Black Cat last Thursday the 21st. In the first half of the interview, we talk about their new album, the reception of the new material, their foray into television, and more. Of course, wherever We Are Scientists find themselves, humour follows. Listen below to the audio of this portion of the interview, and the transcription is below and beyond the cut.

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Editor’s note: What a coincidence: Freelance Whales, the opener for the Fanfarlo show in Arlington in December, was going to be playing a sold-out show in the smaller Black Cat Backstage room the very same night. Unfortunately for us, all that separated us (chilling on a leather sofa in We Are Scientists’s break room) from Freelance Whales sound-checking was a single wall. Also, we were interrupted a bunch of times. I appear to be jinxed with poor interview recording conditions – apologies! Chris and Keith were real troopers throughout the long interview, and I sincerely thank them for their time and insights.

Many thanks also to Zane for setting up the interview and Maegan for sorting out my press pass.

Mary Chang here for There Goes the Fear, the UK music blog, and I am here interviewing We Are Scientists. Hello scientists. (laughs) That never gets old, because I work with scientists everyday in my day job, so…
Chris Cain: Hello. Ah, so you actually say it every morning when you go into work. (smiles)
Haha yeah, I wish! So it’s been about a year and a half since you stopped by Washington D.C., and this is the second of only three dates, right?
Chris: That’s true.
A short tour, right?
Chris: Yes.
We feel very honoured and special that you chose Washington as one of three stops.
It was very close. You guys, uh, you guys narrowly edged out Fort Lauderdale [in Florida]. We did the mileage calculations and it just…who…this is actually closer…this was closer? (looks over to Keith for agreement)
Keith Murray: Yes.
Chris: So ultimately that’s what made the [decision]. We did had a slightly more lucrative offer from a club in Fort Lauderdale, but…
Keith: …the gas money would have been eaten it up.
Ok. So you played Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia last night. And so what was the vibe like?
It was pretty good actually. We were real nervous because we hadn’t played a show since All Points West [a summer music festival held in New Jersey], so we were rusty. And um so Danny played his first show with us. (gestures to Danny Allen, their interim drummer) Um, how long had it been since you played a show?
Danny Allen: Um…4 months? Or something?
Chris: Plenty of rust all around. But it went pretty well. And like rehearsals – we’d been rehearsing for a week together and they had just been atrocious.
Keith: They were really, really bad.
Chris: Dispiriting. We kind of came into this, into the show last night, with our heads hung low and our tails between our legs, assuming we were in for 3 or 4 days of, uh, just beatings. But I then, dunno, something happened, something clicked on stage. And it was a hell of a show. The fans were, um maybe, over appreciative. (laughs)
Keith: Some of them were fainting.
Chris: Yeah, they were kind. Although they kept saying, I heard so many times last night, “thank you guys so much for coming to Philly!” It’s like, what do you mean? It’s a major city. Don’t all bands go through Philly?
No, well I’ll just say this…
Chris: Are you going to claim the same thing about D.C.? Come on!
Everyone goes to New York.
Chris: Of course! But that’s one stop…
Yes, but D.C. shafted constantly.
Chris: It’s weird.
I think on the East Coast, Boston and New York are the most common stops.
But then how you get to…?
Then they go to Chicago. And then they go to Toronto.
But if you want to do a full tour of the States for a couple weeks, you’d want to do D.C. and Philly.
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We Are Scientists made Washingtonians very happy last Thursday night when they stopped by the Black Cat. The D.C. gig was the second of only three gigs on the ‘Big Fuckin’ Deal Tour’ (the other cities hit being Philadelphia and Hoboken, New Jersey, not including a free show shoehorned in between D.C. and Hoboken at Penn State – lucky university students). Going along with the ‘limited engagement’ feel of this tour, bassist Chris Cain told me an extremely limited number of tour t-shirts had been made for this tour (30) and that I had snagged #26 (my lucky number even). The band have a new album coming out this spring; this and other topics were explored in an interview I had with Chris and singer/guitarist Keith Murray shortly before the show (a 2-part interview is forthcoming). But let’s get down to business with the gig report, shall we?

Opening this night for WAS were Uninhabitable Mansions, a Brooklyn six-piece who, judging by their MySpace, can take a joke. (Completely ignore the genre ‘Death Metal’ listed directly below their name.) I can see why were chosen for support: they engage in funny band member banter between songs, a trademark of WAS shows. Highlights of their eight song set were ‘The Brain is a Slow Wave’, starting off with gentle guitar crowds but then ripping into raucous rock ‘n’ roll, and ‘Do You Have a Strategy’, which was just feel good guitar pop.

Later the band made fun of their cumbersome band name, with cute as a button keyboardist/backing vocalist Annie Hart shouting out, “eight syllables of fun!” to refer to themselves and their singer/guitarist Robbie Guertin countering with, “that might be our new motto. We were thinking about putting that on t-shirts.” Just as cheeky was the band’s closing number, ‘We Already Know’, that bears a resemblance to R.E.M.’s ‘It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)’ for Guertin’s vocal calisthenics on this one. The band have an album out called ‘Nature is a Taker’ available on U.S. iTunes.

Following a brief intermission during which I met and chatted with two massive fans who had traveled all the way from California expressively for the show, the lights went down and the now-packed Cat rang out with crowd cheers as We Are Scientists as a three-piece emerged. Founding Scientists Murray and Cain were joined by Danny Allen, who Cain had explained to me earlier was on temporary loan from Australian band Youth Club. Straight out of the gate they played ‘Jack and Ginger’, a new song featuring sweet guitar riffs from Murray.

I did mention the banter between songs, yes? Well, right after the first song, a fan stage right shouted, “I love Chris!” This had the effect of causing Murray to break out yelling, wounded and in mock rage, “what the heck are you doing on the Keith Murray side? You all know I stand on this side of the stage and Chris stands on the other!” Resounding laughter all around. Another punter complaint of “D.C. needs to dance!” was met with Chris’s intro to ‘Inaction’ of “if D.C. can’t dance to this one, it ain’t our fault!”

Highlights of the night for me included ‘Let’s See It’, featuring killer guitar licks and its trademark “oh oh ohs,” and ‘Chick Lit’, the song that will forever be linked to the tonnes of wayward Pomeranians that appeared in its promo video. And then in what felt like a blink of an eye, the gig that I had been waiting for with much impatience (no pun intended) for weeks was over. In total, they previewed four new songs from their forthcoming third major album due out in the spring, and all fans in attendance including myself left abuzz with anticipation for the new release. Bring it on, Scientists!

After the jump: set list and photos.

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Mary and I met up with the very engaging Ross Jarman, drummer for the Cribs, and had a nice chat with him a couple hours prior to the band’s show at Washington D.C.’s esteemed 9:30 Club last Tuesday. He told us about the wrist injury he sustained prior to recording ‘Ignore the Ignorant’ in Los Angeles (ouch!), how it came to be that Johnny Marr joined up with them, why ‘Save Our Secrets’ is a favourite of his to play live and more.

You can listen to the full interview below, or you can read a full transcription of the interview below that (and after the jump).

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Questions marked “Mary” are asked by Mary Chang, USA Editor. Questions marked “MB” are asked by Mary Beth Howard.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Mark and Nick from Fenway, Nigel, and of course Ross for making this interview possible.

MB: Last time you were in D.C., I think you played the Black Cat?

That’s right, yeah.

MB: That was a great show, by the way.

Thanks.

MB: Since then you’ve released the new album, ‘Ignore the Ignorant,’ and also gained a new band member with Johnny Marr.

Yeah.

MB: How has it been the past year, and were you worried about bringing someone into the band who wasn’t a Jarman?

It’s been great. For us, you know, we’ve done 3 albums together, so having another member it just really freshened things up again. For us, it’s been like having a new best friend, ya know? And subsequently, it’s made touring a lot more fun as well, ‘cos there’s like 4 of us now. It was a completely natural thing what happened. It wasn’t like something that we’d planned. We basically met Johnny, became friends, hung out, decided to play some music together because we’re all musicians, and then next minute we know, we’d wrote a lot of songs, seems a bit of a shame to put a cap on it, so we ended up just continuing and it just happened completely naturally.

MB: That’s probably the best way to do it.

Yeah, I mean that’s how most bands start. You end up playing with your friends and you end up forming a band, and it’s no different in this circumstance, either.

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