A Rhetorical Criticism of Brand New: Impressions of Science Fiction Substantiated by Unpopular Opinions

Within the confines of hyper-regionalized Northeastern, and Long Islander, in particular, discourse, I doubt there is a band working today that wouldn’t be considered a “Legacy Act” more than Brand New. What Incendiary is to the local hardcore subculture, Brand New is to the voice of a generation that put you firmly in the “Friend Zone” as evinced by that perfunctory-eyes-glazed-over cryptogram written in your high school yearbook. Brand New is a band that you feel intimately connected with perhaps due to your age of introduction and/or localization to the product, but like anything with cachet and credulity in the wildly public domain, you don’t actually know a thing about them despite identifying with their motivations. They are the Zodiac Killer of music — the haunting specter looms above us all, but WHO REALLY KNOWS WHO THEY ARE? COULD BE YOUR NEIGHBOR IN MERRICK, NY!
Full disclosure, there are few contemporary bands making a living off a secondary income playing music that I am more obtuse in praising than Brand New. It moved me when I was younger, but not so much in later years. Maybe, it’s because I was at Ground Zero living in suburban Long Island when they came to prominence, or maybe it was that deeply insolent attitude that they were no longer my band as their exposure grew more limitless. With all of this said, I’m still fairly confident that I am serving the Lord of Light in suggesting that you steal each and every one of their albums until they either make good on the promise of or pay restitution to every soft stan that paid for that hand-written lyric booklet for the Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. Speaking of which:
BRAND NEW ALBUMS, RANKED!
- The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me
- Science Fiction
- Daisy
- Deja Entendu
- Your Favorite Weapon
Armchair Analysis: Look, I know nothing about music theory and am admittedly tone-deaf, so everything you’re about to read doesn’t mean shit. The following is to be viewed through the prism of my deeply stupid and enormously useless mind. Since I do consider myself reasonable, there is a mutual understanding that by making this public, it’s open season on criticism and/or critique both in terms of the analysis provided, and for the perspective through which such findings were furnished. That out of the way, in an attempt to justify these POWER RANKINGS, may I enter my plea in defense of my thesis:
First, “Your Favorite Weapon” was better than most in terms of temporal greatness, but it was vastly outperformed by The Movielife’s “Forty Hour Train Back to Penn.” For all intents and purposes, these are the same exact record, except one was written by a deeply self-serious savant finding a way while the other obfuscated the fear of the walls crumbling down to make way for adulthood with the straightforward acceptance of imminent implosion. Forty Hour was largely a “fuck-it, I’m done” record proven by the disbandment of the Movielife shortly thereafter. On the other hand, YFW was also largely a pissed-off record, but about combustible relationships looking from the inside-out while failing to comprehend that the coin has two sides, the opposite of the inner band turmoil of the Movielife. Brand New had the advantage of building on YFW, and it paid off quite nicely.
“Deja Entendu” gaslit my peers, and likely continues to do so. That is not to say it had zero impact on my formative years, and I am willing to admit that this record was pretty profound at the time. I aged out of it pretty quickly though as I spent the latter part of my adolescence as a metalcore infused malcontent. God, I listened to Remembering Never and On Broken Wings. I fucking sucked. It wasn’t a fun time, and arguably remains just as laughably embarrassing as the legion of heart-on-their-sleeve wearing Jesse Lacey acolytes that discovered Elliott Smith in college a year later. Yeesh. This record is an angst-ridden masterpiece insofar that it plays to a certain crowd. That crowd that newly identify as misfits, but in reality will look through the lens of time to figure out, glad I went through a bummed out period, it reminded me of how sick life can be and always has been. LAWD ALMIGHTY, the Army of Morrissey-lites this album bred is infuriating to this day. I hate to break it to you, Morrissey is an asshole, always has been, likely always will be, as long as there’s a cat getting abused by being accidentally sneezed on or a piece of Kraft singles is absent-mindedly put on a deli counter that had a bratwurst on it 9 days ago. He’s like Glenn Danzig, but hides how much of a fucking tool he is by being soft as hell. Morrissey’s tour rider is an abomination, but it always includes “1 (one) non-wire coat hanger,” so he can be placed on a hook to make it appear to the audience that he has the backbone to actually stand up.
ANYWAY, “Deja Entendu,” if I’m being honest in an analysis, I’m not sure this record was ever supposed to exist. Considering their subsequent releases, you can catch glimpses of what this band was going to turn into, and that’s what makes this particular record age so damn poorly. It feels like it was specifically tailored to the audience that the band built through “Your Favorite Weapon” (logically tracks) rather than the capitalization on the catharsis of just letting go in the later releases beginning with the “Devil and God.”
“The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me” is a wonderful record. It is perhaps a top 5 contemporary release of the last 20 years. Colloquially speaking, this album fucks. Revisiting the record is truly a joy. As someone who stuck with the band from Jump Street, it was nice for the talent to pay-off. While this album could be considered an experimental screamo album (please read on assuming that cringe didn’t pulverize your bones to coarse powder), the pain and catharsis of the pressures of fame and expectations are left naked for the listener to interpret. It was quite the relief to hear a departure from “the guy that always wears a poorly fitting vest in Taking Back Sunday stole my girlfriend once.” An album that truly doesn’t give a fuck, and says, “this is who we are” is my particular lane, and it also marks the beginning of “we’re Brand New, and I can’t tell you what we’re doing tomorrow.” I, for one, am immensely pleased that BN leaned hard into this progression. Also, that whole hand-written lyric booklet thing I mentioned earlier was a bad move.
“Daisy” was/is a great record, and is possibly the superior album with respect to the discography as a whole. However, those goddamn interludes make this album borderline unlistenable, and inexorably incapable of revisiting. I would rather listen to Mark Kozelek slow jams interspersed with Gilbert Gottfried reading Martha Stewart recipes at the beginning and end of every song.
“SCIENCE FICTION”:
God, I like this album; I may love this album. Unfortunately, I think it’s a billiards album. WHAT’S A BILLIARDS ALBUM?!?!? Well, outside of folks that either have a nicotine or had a nicotine habit, but wear a Nicoderm patch while sipping shots of cheap vodka during day time hours at the local tavern, no one is preternaturally good at billiards. It’s a bell-curve game in that the more you drink, the better you get, but once you drink too much, you revert to being wildly bad at a stupid game that is ubiquitous in bar settings for a reason. So, a billiards album would be an album that’s okay on the first listen, gets better with additional listens, but probably plateaus, and craters soon after.
Judging a book by its cover, I never expected much from this record. The new Converge record was announced shortly before “Science Fiction,” and I had no real idea how an individual could be more psyched for a Brand New record. In fact, my first response to seeing the surprise release was, “cool, these jamokes learned how to play Magic the Gathering and discovered Ray Bradbury in eight years.” Reasonable critique, in my opinion considering the following track listing:
- Lit Me Up
- Can’t Get It Out
- Waste
- Could Never Be Heaven
- Same Logic/Teeth
- 137
- Out of Mana
- In the Water
- Desert
- No Control
- 451
- Batter Up
As I intimated earlier, these records are often some amalgam of related genres that just seem to work out given the band’s at-large talent. That being said, I think it’s easy to write-off this particular record as a more approachable Swans record (shout-out, Jimbo, excellent taste-haver). So, I’ll do my best not relate it to some excellent early Swans archives a bit later on. But, I will say, as dense and somewhat challenging as Swans can be, Brand New circles the wagons on that difficulty, goes full Damon on a whiteboard at Harvard, and produces something equalling a well-read type telling you that they read and understood Ulysses (literally no one has/does, fuck you otherwise), but in reality stopped reading after 40 pages and hit Cliff’s Notes. Nothing wrong with it, and if you can get away with it, kudos.
I’ve also made it explicitly known that I am obtuse, definitely to a fault. So, shield your eyes for this next thermonuclear bad take: I genuinely don’t understand why we can’t praise the late David Bowie for his immense talent alone, but rather have to transmute that talent to being some flag-waving Misfit King. I am willing to say that Bowie subsumed genre rather than the other way around, but genre existed prior to Bowie, and with each continental shift, he was able to adapt by way of sheer talent. He may not have invented the wheel, but he at least had the genius to slap a tire on it. It’s a false equivalence, but I only bring up this perspective because while not nearly in the same pantheon, I honestly have some degree of belief that Brand New does something similar, but inversely. That is, I believe “Science Fiction” brilliantly appropriates genres and impressions from other artists and/or times, which provide a palette cleanser for, quite frankly, a boring age of guitar-based music.
In light of the foregoing, it is finally album review time, but with a twist. I will provide a song not from Brand New’s catalog (Spoiler: Possible Lie) that was impressed on me upon my multiple listens of “Science Fiction.” This isn’t a dictatorship, this isn’t fascism, it is merely my impressions hoping to engage an audience and develop not a controversy, but a dialog about these choices. I am interested to hear what you heard when you listened to this record, and how it impacted you. I would like to think that BN helped to shape my breadth of musical taste, so these are just some songs that came to mind while I listened, I’m sure there are more accurate choices out there of which I would like to know about.
Track 1: Lit Me Up:
Influential Impression:
The opening to the album may not be for me, mostly because the prelude that becomes an interlude throughout the album gives me an alkaline taste in my mouth from the blight that plagued “Daisy.” That being said, the song’s somber synth notes attached itself to this particular Mark Kozelek jam that I enjoy quite a bit. From a song-writing standpoint, I dig the initial casual beat that I view in my mind’s eye as a guy in a beanie playing on a synth pad in a dimly lit basement with a Rolling Rock in hand, as Jesse Lacey pauses Call of Duty to demand it be recorded. By the way, “Lit me up like a witch in a Puritan town,” is such subtle underhanded genius that it makes me think some of this lyricism is sleight of hand that I may just fundamentally misunderstand.
Track 2: Can’t Get It Out:
Influential Impression:
An undoubted stand-out track. In private conversations, this album was routinely identified as a writer’s record, and I think between this and another song to be named later, that’s an indisputable thesis. I firmly believe that some songs and particular music comes to you at the right moment, and imbues a perspective that will never be forgotten throughout a lifetime. For me, this is undeniably one of those songs.
My greatest fear in life is to not be able to prove right those that for whatever reason have placed their faith in me to accomplish my goals. There’s that one line, “I want to tell you you’re all right, I wanna erase all your doubts.” Man, I’d get that tattooed on my knuckles if I had like thirty of them. But, I also get that while this particular jam deals with the stresses, the ins-and-outs of some psychological difficulties, I also understand the stress of just being a creator or at least believing yourself to be. I found myself floating around for a number of years looking for something in my head to blame, and once I ran out of answers, that’s when I started doing things like this — to get it out. And maybe it’s not particularly good and maybe it’s not particularly anything, but at least I finished something I put my mind to. Maybe that’s not enough for you, but it’s enough for me. I’m not really doing this for anyone but me, and sometimes that’s not mutually understood between author and audience. I definitely want you to enjoy it, but whether or not I enjoy it is paramount.
So, since we’re in the sharing mood, and for the sake of extinguishing curiosity. While “Can’t Get It Out” has helped me understand the pressures of living up to expectations (whatever they may be), within the last five years, I will say Blacklisted — “Those Shields Around You,” which helped me wrap my head around the dark things that I thought about myself, and, sorry Patrick, Self Defense Family — “Heaven is Earth,” a song from the album of the same name that came to me during a period of loss, and gave me understanding that the loss of pain was more valuable than the loss of life, take home Silver and Bronze in the Figure-Your-Shit-Out-Olympics.
Track 3: Waste:
Influential Impression:
Look, I know what was said about not making every song a bad shoehorning of a Swans song, but I’m like Frank Castle on this goddamn song. Waste is very high up on the ladder of great songs on “Science Fiction,” but you give me a goddamn interlude, and it’s all cutting the arms and legs off of Barracuda; finding my wife and son in the bottom of a bottle; and high-fiving Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon for giving me that wild hard-ass broken Vietnam soldier backstory. Dank Frank Castle just silently making the snapping gesture while swaying back and forth listening to a walkman armed to the fucking teeth. Um, but Frank, you kinda said that Swans weren’t goin…
Track 4: Could Never Be Heaven:
Influential Impression:
Both of these tracks have a somewhat off-putting medieval band bouncing around the serfdom outside the castle walls thrust against the lamentable issues that strike us all, like some fancy-ass king stealing the love of our lives. It’s like a Knight’s Tale, but actually justifying everyone that sat there with squinted eyes and their hand out with their elbow on their knees questioning themselves — “This is the Canterbury Tales, right?” Yeah, English: 301 cuts, but if I had to suffer through Chaucer, you certainly do, too.
Track 5: Same Logic/Teeth:
Influential Impression:
As a purported logician, I have a somewhat deep understanding of this song in that I can be an enormous hypocrite. I have no problem sloughing off personal relationships to my own ends even if that means ending those connections. As long as I’m right that’s all that really matters. I’ve improved somewhat on this in my later years, but I understand that for all the faces that I see in my friends, my head has spun at some point in my life. And, that means, when you tell your friend you’ll be there, you should be, even if it’s an inconvenience. That’s anti-ME to a T. Fortunately, I have many folks around me that understand my cozied environs and mostly my issues with myself that allow me to be the reclusive fuckhead that I, and I alone, make myself to be. This isn’t a plea because the most profound realization in my time walking this planet is that my embarrassments and milestones of inadequacy have thrived on isolationism, as they are my own fault and that of no one else, but since they’re deeply humiliating, even the innocuous events, I keep them locked under chain and key. But, I mean, every once in a while that bullshit comes out. BACK ON ME BULLSHIT, M8!
Track 6: 137:
Influential Impression:
Good lord, I hate Nirvana. I want to live in a perfect world, and I know that will never exist because every day I wake up, and the Foo Fighters still exist, and I blame Nirvana. Folks tell me, “Foo Fighters are an emotional arena rock band.” Cool, that’s fine, but the Pagan God of Rock and Roll, Dave Grohl, wasn’t even that good of friends with Kurt, and try to tell me about emotion that was won through the crucible of struggle when you’ve been in arena rock bands since 19. Anyway, this song is obviously a slowed-down riff of “Come As You Are,” and aside from that, I’m sorry Jesse Lacey, I can’t co-sign a chorus that’s “Let’s play Nagasaki,” because on an optic and auditory level that’s a pretty big asshole move. I GET REJECTED FOR EVERY SHORT STORY I WRITE, AND YET THERE’S SOME FUCKING EDITOR THAT ALLOWS THIS SHIT.
Track 7: Out of Mana:
Influential Impression:
Look, I know that the torrents of shit are coming on this one because “Out of Mana” is such a banger on this record, but I feel that the juxtapositions of soft and hard chord strumming on each of these songs works in harmony. Additionally, I feel Drug Church crushes a bit more in the nihilism of relationships in the explicit while Brand New is beating around the bush a bit, which fits the song, as ultimately, nothing works and you’re Out of Mana. Yeah, closed the circle; time is a flat circle. Have more faith next time, hater. You’re like a Taylor Swift fan that recently heard her single (it stinks).
Track 8: In the Water:
Influential Impression:
My god, I had this analogy locked and loaded from the first time I heard this song. I love “Amoeba,” it’s god-tier amongst forgotten bands. Amoeba fucks. This is the third best song on BN’s album, and for good reason, it rises up to the challenge to not only rip-off BJM, but possibly even improve on it. Even if that’s a lie, the fact that it is even close is impressive. While I think that this is one of the stronger vocal performances out of Jesse Lacey, the song’s biggest pitfall is that like other BN songs, the lyrics simply don’t make sense. It’s a bunch of seemingly intelligent adages and idioms smashed together that heard through the broader scope of song make absolutely no discernible sense. That being said, along with BJM, the chorus definitely sounds like Goo Goo Dolls, which is fucking sick.
Track 9: Desert:
Influential Impression (who is ready for a Stretch Arm Strong?):
Like I said, some of these comparisons are going to be all right, if not bad. This one, in particular, abides by that preconception like The Dude bowling in league play. MARK IT A ZERO *DRAWS GUN* These songs seemingly have zero in common aside from the velvet seated bar that remains immune to smoking laws and pours harsh whiskies generously. I would probably be in a suit, which is HASHTAG RARE, but even the BN song makes me want to sit by a candlelit time displaced bar-top at which I would snap my fingers and expect the husband of the couple at the next table to take frequent breaks to duff lines off a urinal and return to his mistress by calling her his wife’s name. GREAT TIMES!
Track 10: No Control:
Influential Impression:
Goddammit:
Are you fucking kidding me? I don’t even like Nirvana. I’ve made my life’s work to be an obtuse shithead that denies ever liking Nirvana (Tourette’s is seemingly okay because Every Time I Die covered it). But seriously, tell me that BN’s “No Control” doesn’t sound like “Lithium,” which may be the most metacontextual reference of all time, as you may need Lithium to come to terms with the nihilism in “No Control.” I enjoy this song thoroughly, and peers and cohorts of the scene have informed me routinely that this is the banger of the album. I’m disinclined to agree for the reasons outlined above, but it is definitely the second best song on the album.
It is yet another song that hits at exactly the right time. At a time where the pressures of normal life knowing how big of a piece of shit you’ve been in life seem to add up to mean something, it’s a fight to realize that underneath it all, you may just be a good enough person. But, the cruelest cosmic joke is that while you finally realize that you just may have redeemed yourself, what does it even matter anyway? We have “No Control” over what happens to us. HASHTAG DEEP.
Track 11: 451:
Influential Impression:
Please, please, please, no…ahhhh, fuck it:
There’s a very good movie that David Fincher is attempting to develop a remake of called the Reincarnation of Peter Proud; please consider me the opposite of Peter. I hate Cursive so, so, so, so much. My sister loved them, and I guess riding shotgun in her Mitsubishi August Eclipse all those years before the spark plugs melted into the engine block forced me to kind of hate Cursive, but I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that the sharp tribalism of both songs were present. So, I guess this is the nice thing I have to say about the song. It has something in common with something I don’t care about (Cursive), but it’s better…maybe?
Track 12: Batter Up:
Influential Impression:
At some point, even the fans of Brand New must understand that this was their send-off. I hope it’s not, but from all reports, it just may be, and that’s fine, they’ve maintained credulity in a scene where their peers have ingloriously sold out and recently become an odd disciple of Ryan Adams by way of the Ataris in ripping off the Boys of Summer (I WAS LIVIN DER TO DER!). Whatever Brand New chooses to do is obviously fine with me, I don’t give a shit, they’re gonna do what they want to do anyway, but for someone that was so indifferent to them for the better part of a decade, I feel a bit of regret in the way I disrespected them. They may be the best thing that I ever knew about from the outset, but was disenfranchised just because of their proximity, and that’s not right in terms of artistry. As illustrated in “Play Crack the Sky,” they did their damnedest to put where I grew up on the map. And, if I owe them anything, it’s my respect. Maybe I found some other music that was more my lane, and I know they owe me jack-shit, but I actually appreciate they gave me one last album anyway even though I didn’t deserve it. Brand New is fucking Batman — never the band we deserved, but always the band we needed.
