'TV en Francais'

I’ve been revisiting my middle school music collection recently and it’s terrifying.
That’s not to say there weren’t some redeemable moments on my iPod circa 2008.

Motion City Soundtrack still makes me wanna pogo like it’s the 2006 Vans Warped Tour, and beers all around for the boys in Coheed and Cambria for “The Second Stage Turbine Blade,” arguably the finest emo-progressive album of the 2000s — probably the only emo-progressive album of the 2000s.

So where exactly do indie rockers We Are Scientists fit into this playlist? Right next to the Cribs and the Automatic Automatic. Or at least it did.

See, for a while in the mid-late 2000s, We Are Scientists played a catchy brand of dance-y indie rock that at times bordered on super watered down post-punk. It was cool.

But now the eighth-grade me is long gone and We Are Scientists have just dropped its fifth album, “TV En Francais.”

Though it’s not as awful as I feared it might be, it’s not gripping either.

The problem lies in their new sound. We Are Scientists have traded in their dance-punk roots for some of that blues-y indie rock that’s so popular with the kids right now, and it doesn’t do them any favors, especially on the second track, “Dumb Luck”.

Rule of thumb: when you steal that badass riff from Wolfmother’s “Joker and the Thief” and still bore me, then you’re doing something seriously wrong.

The second half of the record fares a little better.

“Courage” is nice in an “Everybody Hurts” knockoff kind of way, and  “Slow Down” could’ve gotten me to cough up $1.29 six years ago.

“Don’t Blow It” at least has a funny and unintentionally ironic name. Spoiler: they totally blow it with another yawner.

For a band that copped its name from a Cap’n Jazz song, We Are Scientists don’t show a whole lot of energy or emotion on this record.

The songs are all mid-tempo snoozers, and not in an awesome, Carissa’s Wierd kind of way. Most of these tracks could pass as El Camino outtakes.

“TV En Francais” is unobtrusive stuff that fits in with whatever you want it to.

Listen to it while studying. Listen to it while driving around. Listen to it while eating a sandwich.

But don’t sit down with a pair of headphones and 35 minutes of free time and expect the second coming of anything great.

Like a lot of indie/post-punk outfits from the 2000s, We Are Scientists are trying out a more “mature” sound, and though that’s to be admired, growth hasn’t exactly been kind to post-punk. It didn’t work for Interpol, it didn’t work for Arctic Monkeys, and it doesn’t work here.