Blessed is the day I was introduced to my new best friend
\nDeja Entendu<\/i>, the glorious sophomore lovechild of Brand New,
\nwhose music is classified by a number of labels such as power-pop,
\nemo, screamo, or my most favored description: magic. At roughly 45
\nminutes long,
\nDeja Entendu<\/i> conveys an astounding plethora of emotions and
\nsounds in such a restrained amount of time. Brand New took the
\nopportunity on their second effort to actually break through the
\ntraditional emo mold of “my girlfriend broke up with me” songs,
\nresulting in a CD of apparent growth from their debut disc,
\nYour Favorite Weapon<\/i>.<\/p>\n
“And if it makes you less sad\/ I’ll take your pictures all down
\n\/Every picture you paint \/I will paint myself out.” Lead singer
\nJesse Lacey’s songwriting (on track five, “The Quiet Things That No
\nOne Ever Knows”) has improved by leaps and bounds since
\nYour Favorite Weapon<\/i>. Not that the first release was
\nanything to be ashamed of;
\nWeapon<\/i> happens to be a truly great album, but it doesn’t
\nstand up to the lyrical and musical maturity of
\nDeja Entendu<\/i>. Among other great writing on the album, the
\nstandout songs lyrically are number five, as well as number four,
\n“Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t.” “Oh, we’re so
\nc-c-c-controversial\/ we are entirely smooth\/ we admit to the truth\/
\nwe are the best at what we do\/ and these are the words you wish you
\nwrote down\/ this is the way you wish your voice sounds\/handsome and
\nsmart\/ oh my tongue’s the only muscle on my body\/ that works harder
\nthan my heart.” And number three’s “Good To Know If I Need
\nAttention (All I Have To Do Is Die.”) “Yes we are a bullet in the
\nheart and the message sent\/ always dragging your feet over sand and
\nover hot cement.”<\/p>\n
In addition to the poetry of the lyrics, the songs on
\nDeja Entendu<\/i> explore different styles of music never before
\ndisplayed in the band’s previous work. Track number two, “Sic
\nTransit Gloria\u2026Glory Fades” exhibits a short punchy beat,
\nwhere the pulsating lyrics are fired off quickly until it reaches
\nthe chorus, which sounds more like punk than any Brand New I have
\nheard. Imagine Blondie’s “Rapture” on the verses and the chorus
\nfrom Sum 41’s “Hell Song.” Number eight, “Me Vs. Madonna Vs. Elvis”
\nis sustained for three and a half minutes on an acoustic guitar and
\nJesse’s rather haunting voice. It then explodes into a half a
\nminute long instrumental influenced by eighties hair band power
\nballads. It’s finished off with a spirited last chorus so inspiring
\nyou’d never guess the song is one (hopefully fictional) account of
\nun-consensual sex.<\/p>\n
My only gripe on this album is that a few of the songs
\nsound\u2026uhh\u2026like the same song. But hey, if you like
\none, you’ll like ’em all right? Yeah, pretty much.<\/p>\n
The two or three similar songs certainly don’t ruin the rest of
\nthe album. I’d say this is a solid effort from a band that has
\nalready shown their range as not just an emo, screamo or power-pop
\nact, but as a promising musical union capable of (and already
\ndoing) great things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":26427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6883],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-37660","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-brand-new","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37660"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}