Brand New – Daisy

Album Reviews • Monday October 5th, 2009 • 9:50 am

Back in 2000, Brand New brought up the rear of all those boo-hoo-I-hate-my-ex-girlfriend bands. Not as beloved as Underoath, as popular as Taking Back Sunday, or as grim as Thursday, they seemed destined to wear out their welcome and go the way of At the Drive-In (R.I.P. NEVER FORGET).

But, with their sophomore effort’s release, Deja Entendu, there were hints of a band with surprising maturity, given that album’s tongue-in-cheek bravado and enticing musical patience (a trait rarely found in post-hardcore rock , both then and now.) Then with 2005’s The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, Brand New emerged as artists. They were pain-fueled and doubt-ridden, but they directed it all at targets much larger than unrequited loves – singing about God with surprising depth and overwhelming honesty. And their sound, though bearing the same NIN-indebted earmarks as their debut had matured in both fury and intelligence – blistering melodies and thundering hooks. It’s a sound that we all got accustomed to in 2000 but, somehow, Brand New spun it new and shiny, and The Devil and God was heralded (rightly) as a masterpiece. Expectations for their fourth album were set, and how.

So, here it is, 2009, and their fourth album Daisy continues Brand New’s upward evolution. It’s their darkest yet, chunky art-punk that churns and broils before (frequently) exploding without warning; stuffed with screams and riffs that will shock you to the soul. It’s wildly different from their past stuff, abrasive and raw, forgoing any crossover aspirations they might have harbored early on. It’s not the tour-de-force that The Devil and God is, but, lordy, it’s good.

“Goat”-era Jesus Lizard comes to mind, as does Nirvana. One of Brand New’s great strengths has always been (aptly enough, given the name) their ingenuity – they maintain a consistent sound without ever veering into monotony. The first track, “Vices,” opens with a minute of a ’50s crooner singing about something-or-other before frontman Jesse Lacey suddenly detonates along with what sounds like an army of a hundred-thousand guitars. It’s pretty terrifying, and it’s a trick they employ a lot on Daisy. But it got me every time, largely owing to Lacey’s tangible rage – whether screaming or moaning, his emotions quiver with fearsome intensity.

There’s plenty of stand-outs. “Sink” is a feverish assault on the senses. It clips along at a sweltering pace, but it never loses its addictive hooks. And then there’s album closer “Noro,” a sinister six-minute scorcher of guitar riff invention. When Lacey growls, “I’ve tried/ God knows that I’ve tried” those neck hairs quiver like a nest of snakes.

In a career full of brave moves, Daisy is one of Brand New’s boldest. It may well alienate some fans who fell in love with them via Good Charlotte, but those who’ve charted their trajectory for the past nine years should be awed. It might prove that The Devil and God will go down as Brand New’s masterpiece, but it also shows that this is a band with unlimited means of muscling past their limits. One of the year’s best.

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By Tyler Huckabee

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Comments
Daniel novakoski October 5, 2009

i am a huge fan of this album as well as their last two, and i must say that i am impressed with how they pushed their music into a newer direction and made it feel even more personal to the listener than “the devil & God”. their emotions seem to bleed right off the record and attach to your own, fooling you to think that this was YOUR song, and YOUR emotions. they can really capture that personalization and entrapment quite like shakespeare. it is as if shakespeare was a schizophrenic psycho and wrote music instead of plays. hats off as i hand over my heart to them.

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