EPIC {{arts & entertainment}}

For those of you who don’t know, Brand New are streaming a thirty second sample of one of their latest songs on myspace, ‘At the Bottom’, the first single to be released from the album “Daisy”. Having been a fan of Brand New from the glorious days of Your Favourite Weapon, I’ve had high hopes for this album given that I’ve never seen a band progess album to album in the way that Brand New have. Deja Entendu and The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me will forever be timeless, and it’s safe to say any Brand New fan can find themself listening to this album without any realisation of how long ago it was released. However, having seen Brand New live earlier this year, equipped with new songs and not being overly impressed, the anticipation I held for this album seemed to dwindle more and more (and even moreso when they anounced the album title as “And One Head Can Never Die” and then proceeded to change it to something even more shocking in the form of “Daisy”).

Really it comes down to the fact that if I hear one more heartbroken song from Jesse Lacey over whatever the fuck happened between him and that one chick from Eisley, I’m probably going to rip my ears off. Considering lyrics like “wait, watched you throw out your bouquet / now I think about you everyday / I’m alone now in my bed / and there’s a lake / and at the bottom you’ll find all our friends /they don’t swim cause they’re all dead,” even those who pay no real attention to Brand New whatsoever could figure out what he’s rambling on about. The vocals are unimpressive and the only thing that actually managed to impress me about this song was the music, and trust me, without the vocals this would make for a pretty grand album. I personally just hope that this thirty second clip is not going to set the tone for the new album and Brand New might just pleasantly surprise us but so far, it seems like the title of this song is pretty fitting for the state of the band at the moment, especially given that Jesse Lacey has verbalised his own concerns about the band in an interview with Kerrang! magazine:

I think a lot of the record is about us trying to make decisions about how long the band should go on. When I listened back to it, I realized how many songs are about something coming to a close, or knowing when it’s time to put something away and move on.

Plus he’s not doing the hype of the new album any favours with expressing worries about the album, and not at least pretending to act completely stoked on it:

I’m a little worried [about the new album]. It’s a pretty exhausting record. It’s quite dense and I think some of the decisions we made don’t always go in the most obvious direction. We were thinking a lot more about what we’d want to play when we were up onstage rather than actually what you’d want to hear on a record.

For now though, Brand New fans can just revel in the fact that on either side of the pond, you still have chance to seen them before any form of shit hits the fan as they’ll be playing Reading and Leeds Festivals in the UK, and touring the states along side Manchester Orchestra, Thrice, and Glassjaw on selected dates.