Brand New
Science Fiction

The more time fades away, the more I synthesize my memories.
As soon as the age hand turned towards the number 22, the past ceased to be a sequence of distinct and functionally related years. Looking back, I mostly see hazy snapshots of memories that dissolve into a homogeneous blend: the first screw, the first 30 cum laude, therapy, the first drunkenness, my grandmother's death.
A simultaneity to interpret, a precarious future to face, and semantic values to assign to the aforementioned snapshots: the music of Brand New has always been this for me... something on the edge of the consecutio temporum.

The incessant battle between the devil and God, dated 2006 and destined to make proselytes among the epigones that followed, was a detonator for me that shattered all adolescent idealism, leaving debris along the way.
Jesse Lacey, born in 1978, now a family man, a declared adherent of Morrissey and a melancholic soul suspended between faith and heresy, achieved the feat of realizing an opus where sparse and layered compositions, whose structure stands on riffs of simple technical rendition and immediate assimilation, were able to generate a hypertrophic emotional impact in constant evolution, earning esteem year after year in terms of listening longevity.

If Deja Entendu (2003) definitively sealed the tomb of the second wave emocore, modernizing the melancholic atmospheres of Elliott and Sensefield, "The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Of Me" reinterpreted the genre's canons from the ground up, destroying every archetype, especially in a period where the saturation of the proposal annihilated any effort of genuineness, nullifying experimentation and favoring the reiteration of the same clichés (fake screams, bases stolen from pop punk, childish clean vocals, idiot texts, My Chemical Romance and the list goes on).
Following the watershed of 2006 came “Daisy” (2009): a minor album, perhaps sometimes erroneous, excessively disharmonious and chaotic albeit with more than one absolutely noteworthy moment, but, despite the flaws, over the long haul, it proved to be an indispensable transition moment for the band's future. A future already marked by a pre-announced breakup dated 2018, much to the chagrin of those who have always followed and loved them, including myself.

One last glimpse before perishing, one last testimony before abandoning us, one last album in this miserable era of full revival: darker tones, liquid atmospheres, stylistic heterogeneity, and a pervasive tendency towards self-referential citationism. This is Science Fiction.

As often happens in these cases, Brand New’s point of reference for their epitaph is Brand New themselves, with albums from 2006 and 2009 sharing 50/50 the paternity of this still young 2017.

The psychodrama begins: no frontal assault à la Sowing Season, it wouldn't even be appropriate after an eight-year hiatus. A synthetic carpet with dark and electric sounds serves as the backdrop for a psychotherapy tape: a woman tells about her dream with vaguely Lynchian atmospheres. A Lynchian dreamlike delirium persists as the tape crumbles, giving way to chilly and muffled samples, chorused guitars, and Jesse’s voice, ungraceful but incredibly soft.
There is certainly less brimstone smell compared to when we last left off: “Lit Me Up” seems to have diverted the unfortunate “way to hell” towards which Jesse was heading in “Noro” (wonderful closer track of Daisy), embracing a more introspective and considered mood.

The six-minute monolith has opened the gate for us. Moving forward, we find an old acquaintance, unjustly suppressed in Daisy: the acoustic guitar. Solid and intense pickings, deriving from Neutral Milk Hotel, alongside mid-tempo suspended between emocore and alt-rock, open songs like “Can’t Get It Out”, “Waste”, “Same Logic/Teeth” and “In The Water”: back are the tributes to that cluster of '90s groups that represented the exogenous condition fundamental for groups like Brand New to continue their career: songs that perfectly synthesize the Nirvana’s irreverence and the melodic capability of Sparklehorse, aided by the inspiration of their older brothers Modest Mouse.

The rhythmic strum makes way for a dry and essential arpeggio that supports the delicacy of “Could Never Be Heaven”, a lullaby with twilight tones and a lulling stride. Another reinterpretation of the Ballad concept that our men have been carrying forward since they wrote "Soco Amaretto Lime" in 2001 (album: Your Favorite Weapon). The care and whispers of this track are to be expected: do not expect the visceral quality in A minor of a "Luca" with consequent explosion.

There are, of course, moments where the focus is on impact through distortions, exploiting darker and more immediate melodies: a stretch of tape closes "Same Logic/Teeth" ("We started with psychodrama") to pave the way for Dr. Strangelove’s psychotropic ravings and the post-atomic omens of "137", in my view one of the highlights of the album. Here they exhume the atmospheres of "The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Of Me" and the venomousness of the guitars, stylistically exacerbating the voice’s intensity and the rhythmic structure’s dynamism, all in a visionary atmosphere. The pace sensibly picks up with “Out Of Mana”, which recovers the guitar stabs and the abrasiveness of the overdrives, crafting a solid track. Much more relaxed is the catatonic mid-tempo of "No Control", a track with less compositional opulence but no less effective for it.

Completing the sonic spectrum are attempts to revisit influences very close to mid-'70s roots-rock, already attempted in Daisy but with little effect, corresponding to the more opaque episodes of that album. Barely hinted at in the already mentioned "Same Logic/Teeth" and "In The Water", and much more prominently highlighted in tracks like "Desert" and "451", demonstrating the ability to manage more prudently than in the past even sounds alien to the general background of the band.

To close the album is, in the end, it, the closest thing I can associate, at least recently, to the "definitive song": "Batter Up" is the sum, the zenith, the acme, the apex, the pinnacle of the entire album. When it comes to closer tracks, our Long Island folks have always provided final boss pieces; just mentioning "Play Crack The Sky" and "Handcuffs" would be enough. But "Batter Up", in its ethereal and rarefied simplicity, hits like a granite boulder on the open heart. The harrowing melancholy of a song steeped in emotion, which is also the last we will likely hear from Brand New. The sepulcher.

Jesse Lacey's lyricism is less verbose and more calm, interwoven with quotes from previous albums and focused on themes such as 1) faith, less fanatical with biblical references as in the past and more aware of a spiritual condition achieved and closer to agnosticism, giving ample space to criticism towards more conservative theological whims (think of Desert), 2) psychology, omnipresent as the fil rouge of the entire album, and 3) abandonment, an inevitable condition given the postulates the album brings with it.

We could have waited another 8 years, we could have been patient allowing Brand New’s reserved and introverted soul to find its intimate dimension before tackling another work of this level, with the same meticulousness typical of their work. And yet the games end here, crumble while the last notes of Batter Up fade.
For some, it may not be a masterpiece due to its derivative nature, but as the spiritual testament of one of the greatest bands of the last 20 years (at least), familiarity was a "conditio sine qua non" to satisfy. A devastating masterpiece without even a filler and more generally one of their best albums ever. This is Science Fiction, and excuse me if that’s not enough.

Curtain.