A Distorted Reality.

Rating:

This is the only time I have ever even considered reviewing a single, but there’s a more than good enough reason for it: excitement over the 22nd September, Daisy’s (Brand New’s fourth studio album) release. Three years after the excellent The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, which itself was released three years after the phenomenal Deja Entendu – if the progress between those two albums is anything to go by (not mentioning the progress between Your Favourite Weapon and Deja), another three years of maturing should allow Daisy to be just about the best album ever written.

Indeed, there has been progress: Jesse Lacey has stopped trying to be Morrissey (anyone who disagrees with me on that point should listen to track two, whether it be titled as Untitled 2 or, hilariously by some fans, Morrissey) from the Fight Off Your Demons demos) and seems to have finally found a vocal dynamic all of his own: coarse, yet elegant. Lacey’s previous point to fans at Lollapalooza 2008 that they should be watching Explosions in the Sky instead of Brand New seems to have set root in their newer music: the guitar parts in At the Bottom are more experimental than any Brand New work thus far; heavy tremolo combined with parts of subtle quietness really cast reference to their post-rock peers. The song, thematically, does tick all of the Brand New boxes: we have drugs, we have death and we have friendship; it’s a song essentially of the theme ‘I’d scratch your back, but would you mine?’

If this one song is any indicator of the quality of Daisy, I am incredibly excited. Progression has been shown here, with Lacey becoming more aggressive on record and the music taking a more complex turn from the relative simplicity of the music on The Devil and God. Roll on 22nd September.