REVIEW: Brand New - Science Fiction (2017)

“When I grow up, I wanna be a heretic.”

Brand New – Science Fiction
August 17th, 2017

1. Lit Me Up
2. Can’t Get It Out
3. Waste
4. Could Never Be Heaven
5. Same Logic/Teeth
6. 137
7. Out of Mana
8. In the Water
9. Desert
10. No Control
11. 451
12. Batter Up

In a sudden and unexpected move, Brand New, a band from Long Island, New York, has released Science Fiction, their newest album and the group’s first since 2009’s Daisy. Brand New have a massive and ravenous following and a long-running career that many people have followed since the beginning or close to it. Lately, frontman Jesse Lacey has been doing more work recording and producing music rather than writing and playing it. Maybe most notably, he produced Kevin Devine’s album Bubblegum.

Brand New hasn’t be completely silent, though, at least not in the last two years. In 2015, they released their first single since Daisy, titled “Mene.” I personally wasn’t a huge fan of the track but it certainly wasn’t a bad listen. That same year, they sent out the notorious lyric booklets from The Devil & God are Raging Inside Me that they had fans pay $1 for years before. In 2016, they put out another single titled “I Am a Nightmare” and while I liked this one more than “Mene”, I still wasn’t crazy about it and was beginning to get worried about whatever album they were talking about releasing. Though, to be fair, I wasn’t convinced there would ever be another album at that point. Those tracks were later put onto some vinyl EPs and 7”s, including one with a few remade versions of demos that were leaked forever ago. I really enjoyed the remade versions of those much more than the singles.

Last week, though, we were all surprised to wake up to a new album. Of course, their most hardcore of fans were up late and putting all the pieces of this strange Brand New puzzle together. Out of nowhere, preorders for an untitled album went up and were quite limited. The fans who ordered those 500 packages were sent a CD overnight that had the whole album hidden inside a single long track that was titled with the coordinates of the Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming.

The next day, the album was revealed as Science Fiction and put up for download and official preorder. However, the album wasn’t really available everywhere yet. It’s now available to stream but, as far as I can tell, the only place you can really buy the album is Procrastinate Music. SRCvinyl also has some vinyl preorders but it’s always a gamble wondering when you’ll get it from them.

The album is very much not what I was expecting from them but, I have to say, I’m very impressed and pleasantly surprised. As much as I love Brand New, I was never one to keep up with everything they said so I never saw them talk about what their next album might be. I just assumed the singles they released would be on the album or at least be an indication of what the album might sound like. Science Fiction, though, is honestly exactly what I wanted from these guys and I’m very happy to be saying that.

“Lit Me Up” / “Can’t Get It Out”

The album starts with a very eerie and dark recording of a dream a woman had that is haunting and sounds like something out of a horror movie, especially with the distortion they use on her voice at times. That said, it sets the tone for a dark and experimental album that holds nothing back when it comes to lyrics, sentiment and emotion. That’s nothing new for the band, though. “Lit Me Up” is where the album instantly started surprising me because it sounded a lot more like Deja Entendu or The Devil & God… than it did Daisy or the singles from the past few years. It’s slow and has a familiar sounding guitar tone. Jesse’s voice has certainly changed over the years but I think it’s a great maturation. Lyrics are deep, it’s not too repetitive, it’s honestly great. The second track, “Can’t Get It Out” was an even bigger surprise. The guitar at the beginning is straight out of Deja but I assumed it was a little tease… then the rest of the song kept the same format and sound. Despite how much I love their later music, that album is still my favorite by them, so I’m a bit biased toward this one. That said, it sounds like Brand New, so if you like their older stuff, this is the track for you. It’s certainly not the best track on the album but it’s a nice throwback.

“Waste” / “Could Never Be Heaven”

The third track is a surprisingly unique track. Daisy had some southern themes and vibes to it but “Waste” feels like an extension of that mixed with some industrial tinges mixed in there. I wouldn’t say this is a stand-out track on the album but, from all my listens so far, even those that don’t shine are still amazing pieces of music. This one is slow and pretty and dark and I think it flows very well. “Could Never Be Heaven” is another track that I wouldn’t think is a shining example of what makes this album spectacular but at the same time is exactly what makes Brand New so great to so many people. This is one of my favorite tracks so far and it’s a simple acoustic song that almost sounds like a breakup song. Something about it is so beautiful to me and it’s definitely going to remain one of my top tracks from the record.

“Same Logic/Teeth” / “137”

The fifth track, “Same Logic/Teeth,” was very amusing to me the first time I listened through the album. To my ears, it sounds like it has a lot of influence from The Beatles, especially earlier in the song and toward the end. The middle parts are very much Brand New, of course, but the influences seem obvious. That said, this is a great track and is exactly what I would expect from Brand New in 2017. It mixes their classic style and their more recent foray into a more odd and dark sound. That trend continues with “137”, another of my favorite tracks from the album. Again, it feels like a mixture of the music from the earlier work with the lyrics of Daisy. This song is existential and historical, talking about atomic bombs and Nagasaki. Hauntingly beautiful seems like a good description of Science Fiction as a whole.

“Out of Mana” / “In the Water”

The seventh song on the album, “Out of Mana” sounds a lot more like Daisy to me than the rest of the album. I think it’s probably the weirdest song on the album, in the way that their last record was, well, weird. It doesn’t make it bad, of course, it’s just stranger than some of the throwbacks or mixtures of sounds we hear on the rest of the record. Then, listening to “In the Water” again, I’m glad these two got grouped together for my review because this is another track that screams Daisy. I’m not as musically inclined when it comes to chord progression and the like as others but the melody and guitar work in this one definitely sounds like something I heard on Daisy, whereas the last track just sounded like a similar style. I enjoy these two songs in the way that I enjoyed Daisy, actually. I think they’re super interesting and amazingly written but they’re not the songs I’ll hope to hear if and when I get to see the band live.

“Desert” / “No Control”

I’m a huge fan of darker, western-themed music and “Desert” really speaks to that part of my tastes and may end up growing to be one of my favorite songs on the album. It’s a strange sound for Brand New but they’re no strangers to that and I think they do it wonderfully. Then, with “No Control,” we’re back to a more familiar and old sound. At first, it almost sounds like they’re going back to their first album a little bit but I’d say it has more in common with Deja Entendu through the rest of the track. Another one I don’t really see as a standout but still a good song.

“451” / “Batter Up”

The next-to-last track starts with a bluesy guitar riff that comes out of nowhere and I absolutely love it. The rest of the song keeps a bit of that blues style and builds on it, sort of in the way that The Black Keys might, but I think Brand New does it better here than they ever did. It’s intense, it gets you pumped and it’s fun. A very different feel from the rest of the album and I really enjoy that. “Batter Up” is the last track on the record and it feels like it belongs there. Not because it’s a bad song but because it’s slow and sad and encapsulates everything Brand New has been over the years. This is likely to be the last album we get from them and this song is a shiver-inducing sendoff to the album and possibly the band’s career as a whole. If you haven’t already, I urge you to go listen to this track with that in mind and just let it all sink in. Everything I love about these guys is on display here, from their musical styles to their attitude outside of the actual music. It’s beautiful but it makes me so sad.

“It’s never going to stop. Batter up, give me your best shot. Batter up, never gets forgot. Batter up, don’t get what you want.”

Science Fiction was a surprise that came out of nowhere during a period of time when I was feeling apathetic about music in general and showed me that there’s still surprises out there and that I can still be really happy and impressed with bands even if I wasn’t optimistic about them or much of anything in the scene at the time. I rarely look at an album as perfect, and I don’t necessarily think this one is, but I think it comes pretty close. I’m by no means one of the hardest of hardcore Brand New fans and I wasn’t around at the beginning. Hell, Daisy was out by the time I really got into them, but they’ve grown to have a special place in my personal music history.

This album is phenomenal and I think most fans of the band’s previous work will be very happy with their newest release. For the first time in eight years, it’s nice to ask people if they’ve heard the new Brand New record.