Live Review: We Are Scientists + Bleach Lab - Koko, London 03/03/2023
As the band themselves joked on stage, it feels like We Are Scientists live in London. With a Friday night reaction like that at the Koko, who can blame them?
There’s two worlds to the trio – Keith Murray on vocals and lead guitar, Chris Cain on bass and vocals, and Keith Carne on drums – on stage, and you felt them battling each other through their night. It felt like a natural home for both, from the more laid-back moments to the craziest parts.
‘I Could Be Your Safe Place’ opens Bleach Lab’s support slot, and the first track of their latest EP, released at the end of 2022, encapsulates their dream pop world. The four-piece have hints of Pale Waves, and the darker 80s days of The Cure. This is no bad thing. Third song ‘Pale Shade of Blue’ sees the stage oddly bathed in yellow, but it matches the lyrics as singer Jenna Kyle sings “My face lights up when I look into my mind, into the sunlight”. The Cure-esque vibes amp up for the fourth track, ‘Real Thing’, as the singer sways and does hand motions singing the refrain “I wanna be more than friends, more than friends”. Finishing their half hour with ‘Old Ways’, you feel that Bleach Lab are an act to keep an eye on. It’s an intense, introspective, experience, but one appreciated by those souls who came down early.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for coming.” These are the first words Keith Murray says to the sold-out crowd. They knuckle down to ‘Lucky Just To Be Here’, which is an emo, sentimental start to the show. It feels like a double meaning – obviously the wider social anxiety of surviving recent years, but also an ode to Koko’s return to the venue I remembered from years ago, after being knocked out of service by fire damage in 2020. It’s one half of what the trio do well, and we’re all in for the ride.
The flip side is when it really gets moving. This suits the Friday night London crowd. There’s an early mosh-pit as all the twenty- and thirty-somethings ramp up the energy for ‘Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt’, one of the early songs that revealed We Are Scientists to the world. It stayed amped up through new track ‘Operator Error’, then ‘Buckle’ and THEN ‘Rules Don’t Stop’. It feels relentless, banger after banger, but it’s where they’re right at home. The band embrace it, encouraging the audience to “sing along” – jokingly to save Chris’s voice. This raging crowd were going to anyway – singing their hearts out, clapping along like demented seals. It’s hard to maintain composed when there’s tracks on display like the excellent ‘Huffy’ cut ‘You’ve Lost Your Shit’.
Maybe the slower emotional stuff and the rowdy side of We Are Scientists are best bundled halfway through the set in ‘I Cut My Own Hair’. It pops along at a crazy pace, but halts unexpectedly just before the chorus. The band raise drinks to their fallen friend Christian, and dedicate their set to him. Then they return to action in the same high-spirited way that is the full-on WAS experience.
The more sedate side occasionally returns. There’s 2014’s ‘Courage’, and ‘Textbook’ from breakthrough record ‘With Love and Squalor’. They’re not quite as well suited to the weekend party crowd, but they’re part of a curious and important side to the band. Those tracks came either side of ‘Turn It Up’, a dancey song from ‘Lobes’ - a sign of the band’s strength that the new album shines through amidst the older cuts.
If the earlier spell of hit songs felt relentless, another wave was coming. ’Lobes’ hit ‘Human Resources’ had the epic power you expected from the studio version. It’s the closest thing to a modern-era WAS epic, but it’s nothing to ‘The Great Escape’, another one of those early days anthems that cemented their place in indie folklore. That sent the Friday crowd flying, and there’s no exit ramp as it flows straight into ‘After Hours’. Keith sings “This night is winding down, but time means nothing”. It’s emotional, it’s cathartic, it’s what the weekend deserves.
Maybe it’s the speed they play or the relentless nature of the big songs on top of each other, but it felt quite punk. The main set was just shy of 70 minutes. There were fewer speaking asides than I remember from previous We Are Scientists shows – something on a fictitious U2 gig, something, as always with these guys, about alcohol – but maybe they were wary of the Koko’s early exit time.
Speaking of alcohol, the 20-minute encore began with ‘Brain Thrust Mastery’ cut ‘Dinosaurs’. That track ended with the frontman laying on the floor downing his beer bottle before tossing it aside, and then the drummer throwing his can across the stage. It’s probably the most punk they look, amidst the rapid delivery.
Penultimate track ‘This Scene Is Dead’ proved, if anything, how alive it all was. This was from 2005, but felt vibrant and fresh, one of several nods to the rich history of the band who crawled out of New York City’s bathrooms to make London feel like home.
So this is the ‘Lobes’ tour, promoting their January album, but with the raft of We Are Scientists hits from yesteryear, it still feels brave ending on a “new one”. Luckily, ‘Less Than You’ is a cannon straight from the big bangers. It’s something they’ve done well all night, and they’re not letting up. They shone the stage lights onto the mirrorball on the ceiling, turning the Koko into a prom. Admittedly, a prom overruled by the mosh pit kids, but still instigating a crazy form of dancing.
It felt like the way to bow out of the UK run. It’s kind of wild, it’s kind of cool. It’s kind of We Are Scientists. Next stop: Europe.
Words by Samuel Draper
