Interpretive Help, Please
We Are Scientists played the Bowery Ballroom the other night, following on the heels of their new album. Here are excerpts from a New York Times review of the show. I've deleted the parts that has to do with the other band because I don't care.

Right now, EMI Music is promoting two New York bands hoping to ride danceable rock into the mainstream. Both released new albums on Tuesday, and both played the Bowery Ballroom this week. On Wednesday night it was Morningwood, the brash and shameless female-led group that just released its self-titled debut album through Capitol Records, an EMI subsidiary. And on Thursday night it was We Are Scientists, the sly and shameless all-male trio that just released its debut album, "With Love and Squalor," through Virgin Records, another EMI subsidiary.

...

The members of We Are Scientists are just as eager to let listeners know they don't take themselves too seriously: on their CD cover, they are all holding kittens in front of their faces. The music finds a comfortable spot between the neo-wave band the Killers and the disco-punk band the Rapture, all spiky rhythms and yelpy vocals. And while Morningwood took the stage after a long recorded fanfare, the members of We Are Scientists just ambled on and, after a mumbled hello, started playing "This Scene Is Dead," which reduces a complicated night to a pithy refrain: "The night is young/ I'm blacking out/ But it's been fun."

Only 37 minutes long, "With Love and Squalor" is a modest little album that delivers on its promises: it's full of neatly turned-out songs, familiar-sounding but pretty sharp all the same. On Thursday the band played nimbly, propelled by Michael Tapper's skittering drums. During a guitar interlude in "Can't Lose," Chris Cain took a minute to fix a problem with his bass. Keith Murray, the guitarist and lead singer, kept playing but watched his bandmate's progress. "Time is running short," he said with a faint smile, and Mr. Cain finished just in time.

Near the end came one of the best songs, "It's a Hit." It's not, thank goodness, a smarmy joke about the record industry; it's a half-remembered story about a drunken encounter. "This was going so well, but I don't know what I did," Mr. Murray wailed "All I really can tell is, I've been hit, I've been hit, I've been hit." While Morningwood tries frantically to start a party, the members of We Are Scientists act as if they're already at one, and almost ready to leave.

What does "skittish" mean?