Daisy by Brand New [Album Review]

Daisy [Brand New]

After 2006 saw the New York outfit’s The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me it was hard to believe the group could follow-up such a masterpiece. Proceeding the sorrowful almost acoustic “Luca” and hard-hitting indie success “Jesus”, Daisy had much to live up to three years later. Not only that, but changing attitudes within the bands posed a threat to the outcome of the group’s fourth release. Years of obeying the music industry’s rules and regulations had seen Brand New become wary and worn from the everyday standards and made them somewhat pessimistic concerning the band’s (and music world’s) future. Tired of doing things only to please others and never themselves, Jesse Lacey and his gang of Long Island musicians vowed to only say how they felt, no riddles or fluff added. They were going to be more straight forward with themselves and their art. And Daisy is a testament to this. Instead of the band’s converging negativity causing a downward pull, Daisy entertains a raw, gritty honesty never seen before in a Brand New album, nonetheless in music history. Exploring a circumference of bluegrass guitar, heavy hitting drum and bass, and vocals teetering between a sweet and tender serenade and a fiery, guttural howl, Daisy hits every mark in music history. Elements from indie, punk, screamo, and classic rock all compile onto one plot, one album. The ten tracks explore themes of death, love, dreaming, desolation and despair. It seems as though the past three years have brought more pain quintet than thought. Amongst the most note worthy songs are “Sink”, by far the most hardcore song off the record driven by Lacey’s bare but intense war cry, and “At The Bottom”, the sole single off the release and the most intense and candid of the lot. This is not an album to listen to sporadically, but an album beautiful from start to finish. As “Vices” opens with an old time show tune, the recurring theme of vintage recordings pops up again and again to give a consistency to Daisy, a consistency very rarely seen anymore, and plows on until “Noro” sadly comes to an end with the same distinctly melancholy clip. The album finally comes full circle, no matter how much pain the Brand New camp had to suffer to achieve it. But damn did a good album come out of it. Maybe one of the best ever made, if not only of 2009.