Brand New
Deja Entendu

Release Date: 2003 | Tracklist

After the high point of Your Favorite Weapon the tension was on Brand New to make a great next album. Interestingly enough they didn't lose any crucial members and that gave me hope. It gave me hope that Deja Entendu, the second album in Brand New's discograpy would be their best yet. Jesse Lacey had time to own those vocal harmonies to perfection and several years of writing to get the songs just perfect. But did they succeed? No not really. While this isn't the worst album in their collection (Hello Daisy!) it might be the most disappointing for me personally, in my opinion.

Let's go over the good things about this album first. First of all the vocals on it are quite good and really the production overall has improved even over the good production of Your Favorite Weapon. The vocals are all crisp and clear and Jaesse sounds better than ever and so do the instruments, even though they're barely used on the album compared to the last one. That's actually one of my big problems...it doesn't feel like Brand New without lots of power chords, and this album doesn't have much of it (and Daisy somehow has even less!) which really hurts the album for the worse. Another thing that hurts the album is the songs themselves. Unlike Your Favorite Weapon that had pretty catchy songs but bad production, this is the opposite. There's no catchiness here except for a couple tracks. And, from a poppunk band, that is entirely unaccepted.

Tatou is probably the worst opener yet, managing to be ever worse than The Shower Scene, and that's a pretty big accomplishment, so props to the boys on that one. But then come the album's two good songs Sic Transit Gloria (Glory Fades) and I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light. Even though their titles are really stupid and Fall Out Boy ish, these two songs are what save this album from a 1.5. They're pretty catchy and have some great vocals and writing. Its too bad that the rest of the album is very much junk. For example, Jaws Theme Swimming is awful and more annoying than catchy and Me Maradona and Elvis is catchy but too repetitive, and Play Crack the Sky is just a damn weird and out of place closer. All in all unless you are a hardcore Brand New fan with an opened mind, I wouldn't really bother checking this one.

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4.1 excellent

Rank: #46 for 2003