Brand New – Daisy (2009) Album Review

Brand New are about to release their follow-up to the popular and ground-breaking release The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me (TDAGARIM), simply titled Daisy and a lot of people aren’t going to like it at all.

Truly creative bands are always changing their sound, finding what works and what doesn’t; Brand New fall into this category of which few bands can say they are a member of. Jesse comes off as trying too hard to bring change to Brand New’s sound this time around, and it might be a bad thing.

The album starts off with the highly annoying “Vices”. I’m not sure what they were thinking (or smoking) when they created this track. It starts off with a sample of someone singing opera, then around mid 1:20, Jesse comes jumps in, incoherently screaming over a simplistic grunge sounding riff. Ripping off Nirvana’s grunge sound and doing it all wrong is not a good way to start off one of the most highly anticipated albums of 2009.

This album has a very southern rock, folk & grunge feel to it, which is an entirely new direction when compared with previous releases by Brand New. I’m not so sure that Daisy is Brand New’s “album of their career” just yet, it falls short compared to TDAGARIM or Deja Entendu.

One of the tracks you should definitely avoid is “Be Gone”. Unless of course you love listening to music that sounds like a mixture of southern country music and diarrhoea. This is probably the worse track I have ever heard Brand New create, reminds me of the sound that the radio makes when you turn the volume up and down really fast.

It feels as though throughout the album Jesse Lacey tries too hard, but falls short almost every time. Another thing that bothers me is the obvious Modest Mouse and Nirvana influence. There’s a difference between influence and straight-out copying. Most people will proclaim that this isn’t intentional, call me wrong but TDAGARIM didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard before at the time of it’s release.

I can’t help but feel tracks like “Gasoline” and “Sink” sound like they were borrowed from Dustin Kensrue’s song bank of Thrice Beggars tracks. Sink sounds like something Thrice would have written without a doubt, not that I’m comparing the two bands. But you have to admit, some of the new Brand New tracks sound like a mix of Nirvana, Modest Mouse and Thrice.

The album is loud, noisy, incoherent and seems to keep reiterating the same lyrical themes of fire and beds. Don’t get me wrong, I love fire and beds and I admire and praise bands that continually make something new and different (I love Thrice and everything they’ve done), but Brand New epically fail on this occasion.

The album is full of great build-ups and bad let-downs, even the wannabe Marilyn Manson sounding low vocals on Noro don’t seem to help this sinking ship of failure. I’m certain Brand New can do better than this. If this is their career ending album, it’s not a very good one.

The actual physical copy of Daisy doesn’t come with any lyrics. This could be seen as an egotistical move by Jesse trying to make some kind of stand which can be translated to, “we’re far too cool to give you the lyrics”.

Brand New have never be ones to put any effort into their albums, which gives off the impression that they don’t care. I hate to make the correlation again, but Thrice at least take the time to put effort into their physical releases with liner notes and lyrics.

Conclusion

Without a doubt the best tracks on Daisy are; At The Bottom, Bed, Bought A Bride and Noro. That’s only 4 tracks out of a possible 11 that are worth listening too, that’s pathetic for a Brand New album.

I wholeheartedly respect Brand New as musicians and believe they create some of the best music around, but this isn’t one of those times. I really wish I only had nice things to say about this album, because they’re one of the few bands that aren’t afraid to change their sound and annoy a few fans in the process.