Review Summary: Nothing really new, just Brand New giving something back to the fans.
In 2003, Brand New made an EP consisting of acoustics and demo's available to their Street Team. Their were only ever 1000 copies of this made. Seeing as I hadn't even heard of Brand New around that time, I never got hold of a copy. So being the bad person that I am, I downloaded it for free. I personally like it when bands do EP's like this, something for the fans and not for the money of record sales.
The acoustic versions on this record are of
The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows and
The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot. They're pretty good versions although I feel that the latter didn't need an acoustic version because it was pretty light on the instruments anyway with the original version.
The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows happens to be the most appealing song on this record. Jesse Lacey adapts his voice well to the acoustic songs as he lowers his voice slightly and brings the tempo down a bit. Brand New prove here that they are a band capable of doing acoustics of their own songs without ruining the song, instead they give the fan something of a novelty and allow the fan to see all aspects of their ability.
The demo versions are of
Logan To Government Centre which is taken from their debut album
Your Favourite Weapon and
Good To Know That If I Ever Need Attention All I Have To Do Is Die which is from their sophomore album
Deja Entendu. The demo's aren't too different from their polished versions but they show the band in their rawest form. The demo's are pretty decent but don't really show anything different because there are no real differences between the demo's and the originals of these songs, besides the recording quality.
The final song on this EP is an altered and dark cover of the original
Oh Holy Night. The song is rather slow and bears resemblences to some Pink Floyd material. Later on in their career though, Brand New seem to have adopted the style of this song more into their music on their album
The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me, and I think this song would have fitted in more on that record than on this early EP of theirs.
Nevertheless, Brand New haven't done anything too far from their norm here, whichever album you look at of theirs; Whether it's their early or their much later work. This makes a great addition to their dicography but doesn't really add anything to it. It does show their talents with acoustic songs but doesn't really show any indication of what they would be like at writing an acoustic song rather than just converting one to acoustic. I think that the EP serves its purpose though - Give the fans something back for their support whilst keeping their best material for the full-length releases which would be available to everyone.
