Brand New 'Daisy' (Polydor) Released 21/09/09

As this decade slowly come to a close it seems we’re all in for a veritable feast of reminiscing and navel gazing about the previous ten years. When partaking in a look back over the musical landscape of the ‘noughties’ it is noticeable how few bands have truly stepped up and genuinely become bigger and better. Brand New, an American rock band from New York, began the decade as the kind of pop punk band who provide the filler on teen movie soundtracks and play the Warped tour alongside Blink Day 41. Things changed however and over the course of a further two albums te five piece, fronted by tortured     Morrissey look-a-like Jesse Lacey, have become synonymous with introspective melancholy and glorious fits of anger.

 ‘Daisy’, Brand New’s fourth album, starts with ‘Vices’ containing a beautiful sample of a vintage 50’s female solo performance that conjures images of Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. It’s a confusing but captivating introduction that only gets better when the trademark distorted guitar of Vincent Accardo rips through the smoky black and white atmosphere and truly announces that the band have arrived. What follows is a rip-roaring sonic assault that conjures up all the anger and energy that makes Brand New so fantastic in two short minutes- there is more juxtaposition and surprise contained in ‘Vices’ than many bands capture across a full album.

The reason ‘Daisy’ works is that you genuinely feel anything could happen, sometimes all that happens is a big rock song like ‘Gasoline’ or ‘Sink’ but then you reach a moment that flips the record entirely and makes you question just who this band are. ‘Be Gone’ takes a Spaghetti Western acoustic guitar and places it behind the mostly wildly distorted and messed up vocals you will hear all year. It feels entirely out of keeping with the album and the band as a whole but that’s is what makes it work- Brand New take your expectations and let them burn. Further experimentation is evident on the sample heavy title track ‘Daisy’ which sees Lacey conversing with a child amidst a swirl of chanted backing vocals whilst ‘You Stole’ features an epic guitar solo do battle with industrial clatter and intergalactic fuzz. The latter somehow remains intimate and emotionally centred thanks to Jesse Lacey’s vocal delivery.

Brand New won’t get the recognition they deserve in the end of decade circle jerk but neither will they want it. This is a band who could so easily rest on their laurels and make the sort of unchallenging and derivative music that gives their peers such huge success and bank balances but they have shunned the easy life for bravery and honesty. ‘Daisy’ is a remarkable album when put in context. In many ways it meets the cynics expectations by being miserable and noisy but in so many other ways it smashes glass ceilings and adds further evidence to the case that Brand New are truly developing into one of the great heavy rock bands of our time.