With all due respect to the members of We Are Scientists as people, their new album Megaplex sounds like “bro-pop,” and that’s not a compliment. There are plenty of other “bro-bands” out there, of course, which blend themes that would be at home pulsing through an entitled creepy dude’s ears into an album. There is something inherently unsettling, however, even still, about turning on an album and having the first song contain the line “I can’t keep picking one off every shelf” that by all appearances is referring to women.
There is a hint of self-awareness even in that first song, on which lead vocalist Keith Murray sings, “There was a lot I could have done but nothing good — that’s why I stopped right where I stood when I saw you.” The song seems like it is trying to be cute and it fails miserably — at least considering standards of “cuteness” that include mutual respect shared among all people. The fact that there are plenty of other artists out there spouting misogynistic or otherwise toxic lyrics does not mean that the themes contained on Megaplex are any less disconcerting. If you’re stabbed thirty times it’s not as though it all of a sudden stops hurting after the fifteenth time.
The band could have taken any of a number of other ways to telling a story of falling for someone. They could have just dreamed up inventive ways to talk about the act of getting together and hooking up itself without literally taking to referring to and treating women as objects, which is something that has worked for a huge number of other artists. It’s obviously not as though there is something wrong with attraction and hooking up — we are human after all, no matter how many apocalyptic storytellers assert otherwise. It’s that there is, in fact, something wrong with that taking place without shared respect for everyone involved, and literally treating women like objects on a shelf certainly does not entail such a respect. It makes the album fall flat.
It’s a pity that the album is peppered with the questionable at best standards that come to define it by the time you’re through listening. The music is inventive and enjoyable, and the fact that such is the case makes the repeatedly disturbing lyricism that much more out of place feeling. There was some real potential here, but it was lost underneath half-baked, reused musings about how women are supposedly objects to be toyed with and controlled. It’s really not that hard for a musician to put out albums that don’t leave such a sour residue after they course through your mind.
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