The cover of We Are Scientists’ fourth studio album, Barbara, depicts an antique-looking cutlass against a crimson-red velvet background, the subliminal suggestion being that the New York City–based act has a thing for chivalry, valour, and all the other things associated with ancient weapons.

Predictably, given that band founders Keith Murray and Chris Cain possess a sense of humour best described as absurd, such a reading is a little off. Basically, the two also have an appreciation for all things alcohol-related, this fixation on liquor creeping into Barbara’s songs. The synth-soaked “Jack & Ginger” pays tribute to highballs containing Lynchburg, Tennessee’s most famous export, while the percussion-bombed “Ambition” celebrates the numbing beauty of booze with lines like: “Whatever I’ve been drinking lends a small amount of solace.”

It’s not a big surprise, then, that the cutlass on the cover of Barbara is actually one of those drink-garnish implements that usually ends up skewering the heart of a maraschino cherry before being plunged into a slice of orange. And We Are Scientists’ affection for cocktail culture doesn’t stop there. When he’s reached at a Philadelphia tour stop, Murray spends the first part of the conversation talking liquor.

“I came very close to a zombie last night,” the singer-guitarist notes, speaking of course about the mixed drink rather than the flesh-eating living dead. “It was at a place in Brooklyn that served something called a planter’s punch. I don’t know if that’s their name for it, or it’s the name of a cocktail, but it’s really quite good and pretty close to a zombie.”

If Murray is a little confused about how close an authentic zombie is to a planter’s punch, let’s cut him some slack. What matters is that Barbara is every bit as potent as either drink, not to mention a free-poured Jack and ginger. The band has pitched the record as being a return to the sound of its 2005 breakthrough, With Love and Squalor, and indeed it lives up to that hype, the songs mixing power-pop guitar crunch with the feel that made the early ’80s the flavour du jour of today’s hipsters.

Mostly, Barbara finds We Are Scientists excited to be making music, something that Murray credits to new drummer Andy Burrows, an Englishman formerly with the U.K. group Razorlight.

“It definitely felt more like play than work this time,” he says. “Andy has become a dear friend of ours, so we were all just really excited to be hanging out together. Basically, the record wasn’t a strain, even though we put a lot of work into it. It never felt like labour.”

If the recording went fast, then so did the writing. Something of a celebrity in Brooklyn—not to mention England, where We Are Scientists enjoys a massive following—Murray decided he needed to get away to a place where his mobile wouldn’t ring off the hook. He settled on a stint in the college town of Athens, Georgia. The big benefit of that, besides being shuttered in a relatively quiet setting, was obvious: collecting cocktail swords was difficult, at least before happy hour.

“The reason I went to Athens was that I realized it was time to buckle down and get away from the social distractions of Brooklyn,” Murray says. “I had friends in Athens too, but the reality is that it’s way more difficult to meet them for drinks in the middle of the day down there.”

We Are Scientists plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Tuesday (July 27).