To make a gross generalization, scientists are supposed to be objective, urbane creatures, filling their days and nights with researching life's mysteries and acting as the voice of reason and rationality in the face of cinematic hysteria. That is, unless they're the ones causing said hysteria because they've gone … mad.
In that case, something must have snapped in the minds of the members of We Are Scientists. Monday night, Keith Murray (doctor of guitar, lead vocals and boyish charm), Chris Cain (doctor of bass, background vocals and un-ironic mustaches) and Michael Tapper (doctor of drum devastation and background vocals) brought boogying rock 'n' roll frenzy to Lansing's The Temple Club, 500 E. Grand River Ave.
There are roughly 10,000 bands playing the same class of danceable post-punk as We Are Scientists right now, but the way it played, and the way the crowd responded, you'd think the band had invented the genre.
Lacking the cold fashion plate vibe of The Killers, the assumed importance of Franz Ferdinand or the legitimate Anglo-centricity of Bloc Party, We Are Scientists injected fun back into guitar rock.
Throughout the set, Murray was all smiles, while Cain and Tapper lived up to the more methodical implications of the band's name. Their stage personalities carried over into their musical personalities, with Murray's spacious guitar leads loosening the tight-wound grip of the Cain-Tapper rhythm section ever so slightly.
Leading into the song "What's the Word" from their major-label debut "With Love and Squalor" (points for the J.D. Salinger lift), Murray and Cain made their individual purposes clear — the guitar is for a touch of atmosphere, and the bass is meant to shake you. Cain clearly values the high end of the low end, which doesn't hurt either.
We Are Scientists rode into 2006 on the bucking bronco of blog buzz, so it's entirely possible much of the show's crowd discovered the band through Web sites like Stereogum or You Ain't No Picasso. The attention of Internet tastemakers doesn't appear to have jaded the band, and it was game to engage in wry banter with the audience.
"You know what you're saying by being here tonight?" Cain asked of the club's half-full main room. "We've made the choice to avoid society."
MSU student Lindsey Proctor enjoyed the band's dash of "zest."
"I like bands that mix it up when live, instead of just playing their CD straight through," she said.
To take a cue from one of the evening's best-received numbers — "Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt" — the crowd moved, but if anything, was hurt. It was the maxim that indie don't dance. And if the girl stationed at the edge of the stage was any indication, We Are Scientists may be reaching out to those beyond the realm of blog readers.
DeWitt resident Karl Sehuttler had not heard of the band until being invited to the show by a friend, but was impressed by what he saw and heard.
"I just like to get out here and move, and it really did it well," he said. "I really enjoyed it. It was a good show; it was fun."
