We Are Scientists - Portsmouth Pyramids 15/11/10

Morrisey has been known to ask his crowd not to sing along in the past, so as not to spoil it, and it’s somehow ok for him, because underneath all that pompous titting around, he’s a genius. However, very few others could get away with it. Except perhaps, for We Are Scientists.

When bassist, Chris Cain pleads to the crowd not to sing along as ‘this one has quite a sensitive harmony, and if even just one of you fuckers hits a bum not, the whole thing will turn to shit’, he could easily come across as a complete arse, but there isn’t a hint of pomposity about it. Chris and Keith’s tongues stay firmly in their cheeks between songs, with comparisons to Lord Byron and a dedication to Lord Nelson, but as always they keep the music serious. Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt makes an early appearance in the set, as well as a surprising proportion of songs from their debut, With Love and Squalor, which receive the best response. The crowd has to warm up pretty quickly for the headliner though, as the support didn’t quite manage it. First support, Rewards didn’t provide any more than a lesser version of The XX, about eighteen months late to catch the band wagon. Goldheart Assembly showed a lot more potential and the intensity picked up towards the end of their set, but it wasn’t quite enough to prepare the crowd for the energy of the main act.

While We Are Scientists showed that they can put on a good show, regardless of whether they have a permanent drummer (or whether they borrow one from Razorlight), the crowd did struggle to keep up after a while. The first half of the set had both the kids and the obligatory balding middle-aged men of Portsmouth moshing together, to tracks from Barbara, as well as older songs and even History Repeats, a B-side from 2005. However, as the set draws on you can’t help thinking that they could quite easily have got away with playing a few less songs and kept the crowd going. It’s not that the quality of the songs declined, and they still played them with just as much vigour, the problem is that the crowd just can’t keep up with it for such a long set. Saying that, it’d be hard to pick any song to take out of the setlist, and when they leave stage following After Hours, the crowd are still hungry for an encore, and Cash Cow makes for a fittingly lively conclusion.