Brand New - Deja Entendu (Published in Felix in 2009)

I first heard “The Quiet Things That No One Knows” when I was a hormonal 16 year old, and boy did I love it! At that stage I had no idea how this album would change my life, I just thought the guitar in the chorus sounded really cool! “Okay, I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t” was the second song I heard from this album that day and I was blown away.

I thought both songs were really cool, but back then I thought LOTS of songs were pretty cool and the plethora of bands I should listen to was so massive that to buy every single promising album would have cost me roughly a year’s worth of EMA payments (I worked it out). So it was luck that made me buy this album with the strange picture of an astronaut on the front cover.

On first play, I didn’t know what to think. The first track, “Tautou”, was quiet and a little bit spacey and I initially thought the lyrics were repetitive and way too weird. So I was worried. I thought I had bought a dodgy album. And then I heard “Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades”.

That bass line, wow! I mean WOW! It left me rooted to the spot. I felt that a very horrible concept (like that of electron-hole pairs) was careening straight for me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The feeling is delicious, since this song tells the story of two complex, real life people. The loss of the boy’s virginity is allegorised as a lamb being taken to slaughter, so a feeling of anything other than the most oppressive doom would devalue the lyrics.

I had grown up listening to KoRn, Limp Bizkit and Slipknot, so the overwhelming use of acoustic-y sounding guitars did weird me out somewhat! But the sheer arrogance of the lyrics “I am Heaven sent” and the insane overlay of voices in “The Quiet Things…” had won me over by the end of track 5.

I have enjoyed every track on this album, but space is limited and I would like to talk briefly about the final track, “Play Crack The Sky”. The folk-feel and constant referencing to the sea gives the song an intimate “fisherman’s story” feel. This song is a beautiful, yet sad story detailing the decay and sudden end of a relationship caused by a mindless comment. And that’s what I love about this album, the lyrics tell stories. And the stories are cleverly written and deal with real issues which we will all at one point have to cope with. Decoding each song’s meaning can be quite arduous but that means that this album only gets better with every listen. I can still listen to it (nearly six years later) and understand a song in a different way.

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