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I needed this.

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An unabashedly biased review of Science Fiction, by Brand New

I don’t have a favourite band. I do however have an upper echelon of favourite bands and Brand New has held a permanent position therein since 2006′s The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. That album was so good that in the run up to the release of 2009′s Daisy, my overriding emotion was fear - how could they possibly follow up TD&G? Could I handle a disappointing Brand New album?Fortunately, the two releases were different enough that to compare them would be relatively futile and Daisy remains an album that I hold in high esteem.

In the 8 or so years that have passed since Daisy’s release, I thought that Brand New would fade away. I was always hungry for new music but when the best part of a decade goes by without a studio album you do start to wonder if your heroes’s hearts are still into this as much as you are.

And then, suddenly, Science Fiction happened.

What you’re about to read is my first ever review. It may also be my last. I am not a reviewer and I do not intend to be a reviewer. I just feel so utterly compelled to write about this album that I have dusted off this dormant old Tumblr account for that exact purpose.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Lit Me Up opens with quite possibly the most eerie sample to which I have had the (dis)pleasure of listening. It is uncomfortable. It is discordant. It sets the tone and ensures that the album has your undivided attention. The sample gives way to an ethereal guitar line accompanied by deliberately minimalistic percussion (more on which later) and haunting vocals. At around the 3:20 mark there is the hint of a swell, you think the song is going to explode a la Daisy. But non. What happens next is indicative of the masterful, mature song writing that besets this album - Lit Me Up takes a decidedly restrained route towards its refrain, which is beautifully led by an exploratory bass line. And, if you tell me that you don’t get chills when the song is suspended to allow Lacey to lament that “when I grow up, I wanna be a heretic” well, then, frankly I won’t believe you.

Can’t Get it Out represents a change of pace and what I think is the first example of whistling on a Brand New track. It is far more conventional than the opener and I think that this is deliberate. It offers a moment of toe tapping respite following what was a emotional first song.

Waste initially takes a turn towards the subdued, led as it is by a brilliant harmonising vocal line. There is an unashamed simplicity in the song writing here that only Brand New in their pomp can get away with - it is more gripping than it should be, but gripped I am.

Could Never be Heaven starts with Lacey singing over nothing but an arpeggiated acoustic guitar, before being joined by (I assume) Accardi’s harmonising vocals and second guitar line to turn this into a piece of music that ebbs and flows effortlessly before there it is again... A jarring, eerie, sample that ensures that any comfort you managed to garner during the last three numbers is erased.

Same Logic/Teeth is heavier (in the traditional sense) than anything that comes before it on this album, especially just before the two minute mark where we hear a more aggressive Jesse Lacey for the first time on this record. At this point the stomping, distorted bass line becomes more apparent and begins driving the song towards the absurdly delivered line “at the bottom of the ocean fish won’t judge you by your thoughts”. Two points on this - the first, I think that this is clearly a reference to Daisy’s “At the Bottom”, and the second is the way in which the line is sang... The swagger is palpable. It reminds me of a dominant boxer showboating by dropping their guard against an notably weaker opponent. At this point you know it, and they know it - Brand New are on top of their game. The final 90 seconds is dynamic, moving between the heavy and the acoustic before the instrumental refrain, which I assume is Teeth, leads us into...

137, “we started with psychodrama”, another short sample that reminds you not to let your guard down as a prescient piece dealing with nuclear wars gets underway. The conventional verse-chorus-verse-chorus type structure means that by the time the final chorus comes around you are well equipped enough to sing along, and let me tell you, it’s difficult not to.

Out of Mana comes out of nowhere with its riffy, lead guitar led intro giving way to a bass heavy first verse. This pattern is repeated for the first couple of minutes before the middle twelve explodes into a wah-pedal solo that in 2017 only seems acceptable coming from the guitar of Vince Accardi. What follows from 3:44 onwards is a simple guitar/vocal interlude including the line “I’m a ghost, I can’t say I know that I’m leaving here, or is this an eternal test?”, which has to be the most deliberately Brand New way of commenting on the constant speculation as to whether or not this is indeed their swansong. Right?

In The Water begins with a bluesy feel before breaking out into an expansive sounding chorus underpinned by acoustic guitars and a meandering bass guitar. The swells provided by the harmonica work from 5:01 onwards are truly beautiful however as the song fades, you sense the approach of another terrifying sample. There is a brief moment of respite as the familiar line “and we sing this morning that wonderful and grand old message...” evokes memories of Daisy but the glitchy, looped words “seven years” soon strip away any comfort you may have found in that old sample as an ambient swell and ominous, distant tapping move us onto...

Desert and it’s bouncy introduction. “Last night I heard a voice, it said this is the end”, which I am told is written from the point of view of a homophobic parent. I don’t know about you, but I feel as though I can hear Lacey seething as he has to get into character to deliver lines that he clearly doesn’t agree with, especially as the song reaches its end.

No Control is a track that I think I would not enjoy had it been released independently of this album. With its almost “lazy” delivery, I did find myself wondering if Brand New themselves were bored with No Control. Amongst its eleven counterparts however it serves an important purpose - it acts as a bridge between Desert and the truly disturbing interlude at its own end to keep your ears interested. I don’t know where it comes from but the twisted laughter at the end gives me the willies.

451 follows the laughter and picks up the tempo in what is a truly brilliant song in its own right. The bouncy, exciting, way in which this song marches forward soon makes you forget how scared you were mere moments ago. The verses build the tension. You know that, this time, Brand New are going to do what you expect them to. The chorus is going to explode and when it does the pay off will be worth the wait. And it is. It really is. Another solo dissipates into feedback, which is guided by some truly brilliant percussion into its last chorus and eventually its ever softening outro.

Batter Up follows. This is the song that Jesus could have been, and as someone who adores TD&G like very few other albums, that is a huge statement that I do not make lightly. It is peak Brand New. A trademark simple arpeggiated guitar, and a vocal line that instantly ensnares you with a harmony that is more likely than not to give you goosebumps. The first hint of percussion occurs as the second verse gets underway, it builds into the second chorus and typifies the thing that I love most about Brand New - their ability to find that place between being too restrained and too raw, and staying there effortlessly. At five minutes in you get the feeling that this piece of music, this album, this band, is coming to an end. It’s horrible, it’s upsetting, yet uplifting. The refrain, without vocals, and with slowly fading and meandering instruments gives the impression of letting go. Just before the seventh minute, the final note is plucked and we are left with an lingering ambience that sums up Brand New’s mystique after all of this time. If this is the end, it is perfect. I thought it in 2006, but I know it in 2017 - Brand New cannot follow this up. 

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Pianos Become The Teeth // Cambridge, MA

The night Keep You was released.

pianosbecometheteeth, epitaphrecords

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*bites lip*

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Robert Guerrero rollerblading… (2009, www.ds-photo.nl)

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The smartest people in the whole friggin’ world had a con in ‘27…

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Howdy, Mr. Aeroplane 👋

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Stride.

A sanctuary, every route to which I knew like an old friend has become a destination with which I will be hereafter unfamiliar.

As clarity gives way to fog, a discordance grows between a pair of footsteps that once tread in unison. As I try desperately to entwine the haunting echos of separation, it is my feet and mine alone that I begin to hear. They are lost.

Fleetingly, there is a distant resonance beyond a door to a hallway that I have yet to explore. My tentative grasp on its lukewarm handle urges caution as I convince myself that choice is an illusion, and so the door is as good as open.

Delicately but with the requisite cachet to announce my presence, I place a foot over the threshold. My echo is not met by another. Undeterred and purposefully, I continue onwards, chancing for sonic resolve.

The door behind me labours shut, and the hallway becomes a chaotic sensory vacuum populated only by my insecurities, whose uncharted form elude even the finest cartographers. I decide however that as it had a beginning, it must too have an end.

Determined to trace it I manage momentarily to allay my fears sufficiently to manufacture an exit, on which I pin all of my hopes. A slight disconnect between the exit and its frame emerges as my eyes scramble longingly for the view of the other side. My fingertips embrace the pain as I widen the gap, convinced that I must pass.

I am met by a room of pulsating figures, with nothing in common but their unpredictability. Through the unrelenting hubbub I swear I hear two footsteps one half of a step out of line with mine.

The old, familiar prang in my abdomen screams a warning as I try to match your stride, but the crowd will not comply. My stride becomes theirs, irrational, unpredictable, and ultimately out of step with yours.

I plea for the figures to away and to grant me peace, but feeding on every ounce of my desperation, they become colossi. Through this crowd, you become impossible to hear.

I resign myself to tread gingerly, avoiding the crushing footsteps of growing giants, in the hope that if I am ever to hear your stride again, it will not be doubled in volume by that of another.