Brand New
'Daisy'
(Interscope)  

The crackle of vinyl, a mournful piano figure and a classical voice - a woman’s voice – open the new album by American mall-punk band Brand New. These first moments of ‘Vices’ are a passage of complete antithesis, a minute and a half of everything that is ‘other’ to the band’s own digital gloss perfectionism. The fact that they choose to introduce themselves with such a juxtaposition on this their fourth album is telling; it’s one of the most jarring and violent opening tracks you’ll hear this year but also one of the most empty and gimmicky.

Back in 2006, Brand New released a surprisingly good album in The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me. It was a record that won me over slowly, one track at a time starting with single ‘Jesus’. It was an album almost entirely without filler, a true rarity in this genre. Thus, I had high hopes for Daisy and the band had certainly mustered enough goodwill to earn their new work repeated listening. Unfortunately, after a dozen plays, I’m yet to find anything I find particularly likable. In fact, I find the majority of it grating and annoying.  

The most immediate problem is the album’s production which is overbearing throughout and on occasion, simply sounds bad. There’s guitar tones in ‘You Stole’, for example, that are so digitally manipulated that they sound embarrassingly cheap and corny. There are more widespread problems as well. Across the album, it feels as through every vocal line that could have been doubled has been tripled, every lyric that could have been yelled has been screamed and screamed and screamed, every kink and hesitation has been removed or corrected or idolised, layered, polished and repeated. Every utterance on this album sits perfectly in its place eventually clogging the sound spectrum until I can’t hear the band. I really can’t. This isn’t music, this is a series of microscopic distractions pitched in tune.  

It’s tempting to cast Daisy aside as a failed experiment. The band, for all their faults, are admirable reappraisers of their sound from album to album. Unfortunately, I think the main problem here is a lack of quality material. For all its forcefulness and meticulous construction, its detours and odd-ball moments, this feels like a dud batch of songs. When singer/guitarist Jesse Lacey sings ‘I pretend like I’ve got something to say/ but I’ve got nothing’ I believe it, I take him at full literal face value. Nothing about Daisy gives me any reason to doubt him.    

Ian Rogers