Look Back #5 Brand New - Deja Entendu

Artist: Brand New Album: Deja Entendu Link: www.myspace.com/brandnew

Let me start by saying this. Deja Entendu is easily my all time favourite record. Phew…now that’s over I can begin.

I first saw Brand New supporting Finch at the Waterfront in Norwich years and years ago when I was at college. Prior to the gig the only thing I heard about the band was from my friend Toby who said he saw a video online and thought they sounded good. That was one hell of an understatement. They were intense and probably the first support band I had ever seen that managed to kill the main act off within such a short period of time.I’ve probably told this story a million times, no forget the probably part, I’ve DEFINITELY told this story a million times but i'll carry on anyway. They mainly played songs from Deja Entendu but also a few off their first record, Your Favourite Weapon. So the next day I went out and bought the only record that was available, Your Favourite Weapon and I’ve gotta say, after first listen I was mightily disappointed. No trace of the brilliance I heard the night before. Why oh why? Put simply, their record label wasn’t doing their jobs which resulted in them touring a record that wouldn’t come out for another year in this country but was readily available in the states.

Not thst YFW wasn’t good but it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Looking back now I love it but that says more about my love for the band than it does the record. So after that fiasco I completely forgot about the band until quite some time later when I was looking through HMV and came across a CD with an astronaut on it and instantly picked it off the shelf. You see I was in my ‘find new bands through buying CD’s with nice covers’ phase and this seemed like the best choice in front of me. But wait a sec, what’s the name on the side, oh Brand New. I remember the mix of fear and excitement rooting through my body. On one hand maybe this is the album I should have had in the first place but on the other it could turn out like YFW and I didn’t want that pain again. I’m pretty sure you’ve guessed what my choice was.

So I went home, put it on and suddenly everything made sense. This is what I’d been missing out on. I could quite easily talk about every track in detail but that’s not what this is about. What I will tell you is that this record spoke to me more than any other I’d heard before. As a teenager every track seemed to relate to what happened in my life. Falling in love and having my heart broken was backed up by Jesse’s songs and back then it meant the world to me. It still does. It’s just harder to relate to songs that were so specific to a point in my life. But even with that said, I can still happily listen to it but this time around rather than acting as a soundtrack to teenage angst, it’s a trip down memory lane.

“I will lie awake and lie for fun and fake the way I hold you and you fall for every empty word I say”

Beautiful

Highlight/Download: Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis