With Love and Squalor, Pam

I'd never listened to We Are Scientists before this week. I'm not sure I had ever heard of them. Many times, I would listen to a song on With Love and Squalor and think I had heard it before. Is this the We Are Scientists song I am familiar with? But having listened to the album all the way through, I learned that this song does not exist.

I think the band (at least on this album) does a good job of sounding like every similar band out at the time. I would think it's a detriment to the band that I recognize the "sound" but I don’t know any of the songs. Any of their songs could be a B-side on a Killers or Franz Ferdinand album. I would even dare to compare them to Kai's last pick—Arctic Monkeys. And even though We Are Scientists's With Love and Squalor was released a year prior to Arctic Monkeys' Whatever People Say I Am..., the latter embodies that je ne sais quoi that I feel that With Love and Squalor ultimately lacks. It doesn't speak to me. Maybe the album has a little too much to do with going out to bars and blacking out to be relevant to me in my current state.

Is it a fair assessment to say that they sound like they're doing a really good impression of other bands and leave it at that? You could confirm this for me, or just as easily tell me that they are indeed contemporaries of these other indie bands, and I'd believe you either way. The album is fun and the energy and beat familiar. Too familiar, but not familiar enough for me to recognize or appreciate any of their songs? I think therein lies the problem. Be sure to catch all the rest of my bitchiest reviews over the next nine weeks!