User:Kiac/Brand New

Deja Entendu and acclaim (2003–2004)
Brand New's second studio album was written in "the year and-a-half or two years" that they were touring the material off of Your Favorite Weapon. According to drummer Brian Lane, "Jesse [Lacey] wrote a lot of the lyrics about different things than 'I just broke up with my girlfriend' for the new record," as Lacey wrote the songs on his acoustic guitar in his bedroom. Lane also explained that the band was now influenced by a range of different artists, "All of us got exposed to a lot of different music that all of us were listening to. For the first [album] we weren't in such close quarters for 24 hours a day. I think that has a lot to do with it." Unlike their first album, it was said that a lot of time and concentration went into making the album.

The band released Deja Entendu through Razor & Tie/Triple Crown Records in June 2003, with it being issued in Europe and Australia in October 2003. The album's title, Deja Entendu, is French for "already heard." It was explained as "very tongue-in-cheek," by singer Lacey. Further explaining the title, he told MTV, "No matter who you are or what your band is about, you can't put a record out without people saying it's derivative of something else. So by saying the record's already been heard, it's kind of like saying, 'Yeah, you're right. We're doing something that's already been done before.'" The album was described as a "stylistic leap" from Your Favorite Weapon, with a "decidedly matured" sound. Frontman Jesse Lacey told Billboard that although Deja Entendu does offer a different sound, the album "doesn't seem like we're departing from anything, really. I think we always knew that we had a lot of potential and there's a lot of different stuff we were able to do, and a lot of different sounds we wanted to make. Not too long after we recorded the first record, we were already wondering where we were going to go from there."

Deja Entendu debuted at number 63 on the Billboard 200. After just seven weeks, the album's sales were at more than 51,000 copies, already closing in on the sales of its predecessor, Your Favorite Weapon. Four years after its release in May 2007, it was certified gold for surpassing 500,000 sales in the United States, by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Deja Entendu's first single, "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows", impacted radio airplay in July 2003, a month after the album's release. The song was said to be about regret, or "How there can be problems in a relationship and they get ignored. And how that often ends up as a broken home or some kind of bad situation down the road. It's kind of something that if it wasn't overlooked in the first place, you can kind of get through it." The song's music video chronicles the moments after a severe car accident, where a mortally wounded Lacey cannot depart for the next world until he knows that his girlfriend, also injured in the crash, is safe in this one. He says it "is about death or losing someone and it's those moments that you kind of look back on your life and realize all the regrets that you had, and all the things you wish you could change". They also made a music video for the second single, "Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades", where Lacey acts like a human voodoo doll; discovering that when he moves a particular body part, it is mimicked by the target of his action. "Since the song is about taking advantage of someone else," he said, "there's a pretty strong correlation between the video and the song." Both music videos gave the band exposure in the mainstream where Your Favorite Weapon went "virtually unnoticed", with the videos finding "constant" airplay on MTV and the band making its live television debut on The Jimmy Kimmel Show. Furthermore, both singles entered the top 40 on the UK Singles Chart, whilst "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows" peaked at number 37 on the Hot Alternative Tracks chart.

Three shows of the band's 24-date headlining US tour with Moneen, Senses Fail, and The Beautiful Mistake had sold out prior to even having released a single, with much of the buzz surrounding the band being produced by just word of mouth, touring and Internet message boards. Deja Entendu's success also earned them tours alongside New Found Glory, Good Charlotte, Dashboard Confessional, and Blink-182. The band went on to headline The Bamboozle festival with My Chemical Romance, Alkaline Trio, Thrice, The Starting Line, Fall Out Boy, The Bouncing Souls, Straylight Run and Flogging Molly. They also made their second trip to the UK in 2004, their first as the headline act, the tour completely sold out.

After being pegged as an act to watch in Rolling Stone's annual "Hot Issue", topping punk critics' year-end lists with the "genre-defying" Deja Entendu, with it also becoming a "landmark album of so-called "emo-punk" (even though it's nothing of the sort)," and the band's notable underground following; Brand New found itself in the middle of a bidding war from record labels. At the time, Lane protested the label of "bidding war", but conceded, "There's a few labels that are definitely interested. We've been talking to a lot of people for a while and we're narrowing it down." The band eventually signed with DreamWorks Records, which was then taken over by Interscope Records.

Formation
Influences, basement.

Formed

well, Garrett, Brian and i had all been together previously called the Rookie Lot, which also included our friend Brandon who now plays guitar in the Movielife. Anyway, that broke up and after all of us not playing together for a while we kind of got antsy and we started rehearsing again. Just informal, in the basement, kind of stuff. But we started liking the songs we were writing, so we recruited Vin who was in a band called One Last Goodbye, recorded a demo, and started playing shows.

Uh, yea I was in a band called The Rookie Lot, with Brian and Garrett as well, and Brandon from The Movielife.

Your Favorite Weapon
Sold 50,000+

Deja had passed this figure after just seven weeks.

Deja Entendu
Following a bidding war, Brand New has signed to DreamWorks, Billboard Bulletin reports. The rock group's "Deja Entendu," issued in June on Triple Crown/Razor & Tie, has sold 104,000 units in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album will be issued Oct. 13 in Europe and a week later in Australia.

Frontman Jesse Lacey tells Billboard.com that although "Deja Entendu" does differ in sound from the group's 2001 debut, "Your Favorite Weapon," the album "doesn't seem like we're departing from anything, really. I think we always knew that we had a lot of potential and there's a lot of different stuff we were able to do, and a lot of different sounds we wanted to make. Not too long after we recorded the first record, we were already wondering where we were going to go from there."

Brand New is in the midst of a North American tour with Dashboard Confessional, MXPX and Vendetta Red.

Dead link

Drummer Brian Lane. "Jesse wrote a lot of the lyrics about different things than 'I just broke up with my girlfriend' for the new record," he says. "The second record was written in the year and-a-half or two years we were touring off of that first record. All of us got exposed to a lot of different music that all of us were listening to. For the first one we weren't in such close quarters for 24 hours a day. I think that has a lot to do with it."

Brand New has reportedly been at the center of a bidding war among major labels. "I wouldn't say it's a bidding war," Lane modestly protests. "There's a few labels that are definitely interested. We've been talking to a lot of people for a while and we're narrowing it down."

And although a major label deal and a third album are on the horizon, and the band's recent television debut on ABC's "The Jimmy Kimmel Show," it's the being pegged as an act to watch in Rolling Stone's annual "Hot Issue" that has got the members of Brand New juiced at the moment.

Dead link

Headlined The Bamboozle festival with My Chemical Romance, Alkaline Trio, Thrice, the Starting Line, Fall Out Boy, the Bouncing Souls, Straylight Run and Flogging Molly.

Originally intended as a sort of commentary on the state of modern rock, Deja has become a landmark album of so-called "emo-punk" (even though it's nothing of the sort), thanks to songs like "Sic Transit Gloria ... Glory Fades" and "I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light," both of which sound like they could be part of a Fall Out Boy set list today. If you want to trace the evolution of punk from Refused's The Shape of Punk to Come to FOB's From Under the Cork Tree, this is your middle stop.

"Brand New topped punk critics' year-end lists with the genre-defying Deja Entendu"

Completely sold out their first UK tour in 2004. Their second tour of the UK, the first was supporting Finch.

Live review

Bidding war

Devil
depressed.

Interviews

 * http://www.bbc.co.uk/southampton/music/brandnew_iview.shtml
 * http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2007/02/12/120207_brand_new_interview_feature.shtml
 * http://www.absolutepunk.net/showpost.php?p=4303747
 * http://www.truepunk.com/interviews/brandnew/

Articles

 * http://www.chartattack.com/news/35351/are-brand-new-becoming-a-prog-rock-band
 * http://www.chartattack.com/news/35351/are-brand-new-becoming-a-prog-rock-band

Deja
The band's second album, Deja Entendu, was released in June 2003 to much acclaim. The album was described as a "stylistic leap" from Your Favorite Weapon, with a "decidedly matured" sound. It was produced by Steven Haigler, who was the sound engineer on the Pixies' Trompe le Monde. The title is French, literally translating to "already heard", which is said to be at critics who claimed that the band sounded like every other group in the genre. Jesse Lacey got the name for the album while watching an episode of Jeopardy!.

The band has stated that most of the songs were not demoed and were "rushed", and that eleven out of the twelve songs recorded for the album appeared on it - with only "Flying at Tree Level (Version 1.0)" left off, which later appeared on the Beer: The Movie soundtrack. "Play Crack the Sky", whose title refers to Lacey's friend, and former Taking Back Sunday guitarist, John Nolan, yelling out "play Crack the Sky!" during a Mylon LeFevre concert, was a late addition. The album debuted at number 63 on the Billboard 200.

Three singles were released from this album on Eat Sleep Records and Sorepoint Records. The first single released was "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows". Their second single from the album, "Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades", is a shortened version of the common Latin phrase sic transit gloria mundi ("Thus passes the glory of the world") and is a reference to a line from the movie Rushmore. Both of these singles were top 40 hits within the UK, and their videos received relatively heavy rotation on MTV2 and Fuse TV. The band released a third single from the album, "I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light", (the title a reference to a line in the young adult book The Moves Make the Man by Bruce Brooks) solely for radio play.

During 2003, their debut album was also remastered and re-released, followed by its debut in Australia and Japan in early 2004. A limited edition EP, entitled The Holiday EP, was released soon after the album in late 2003, available only to the band's Street Team members. It contained demos from Deja Entendu, album art by artist Brian Ewing, as well as a new song - "O Holy Night". Available for only the price of postage, this EP sold out quickly, and has never been re-released. Consequently, it is extremely rare.

On December 28, 2003, New York Times music critic Kelefa Sanneh ranked Deja Entendu number 5 on his top 10 albums of the year. Brand New were also named Alternative Press Artist of the Year in their annual reader's poll. The album was certified gold in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Between May 2004 and June 2005, no new material or information was publicly released. During that time, the band signed to major label DreamWorks Records, with Interscope Records buying the label out shortly after.

Devil & God
In late 2005, Brand New started recording their highly-anticipated third album in Oxford, Mississippi with producer Dennis Herring, but later dropped him in favor of Mike Sapone with whom they had worked on their first album.

On January 24, 2006, nine demos recorded in preparation of the new album were leaked onto the Internet. All nine tracks were untitled and were of unknown origin. It was stated by an unknown source that these demos "probably won't be on Fight Off Your Demons", the then-rumored title for the new album based on the band's new website address. In the following months, with Brand New doing their first tour dates in over 18 months, a few songs from the demos were performed with a full band, some were fleshed out and had new lyrics. New songs had their debut as well during the summer tour dates. Brand New began their first tour in years on June 20, 2006 at New Jersey's famous Starland Ballroom, where Lacey stated that the album had been completed the previous day.

Alternative Press published a preliminary date of October 10, 2006, as the album's release date, this was later corrected on the band's official website, when it was announced that the new album would be released on November 21, 2006 in North America, and the day before in Europe. Soon after, a track listing and cover art were revealed, as well as new information regarding the release of the first single - "Sowing Season". Having previously been leaked as a demo, the completed song began airing on radio on October 19, 2006, and appeared on their MySpace page a day later. According to Lacey in a radio interview from the UK (BBC Radio 1 with Zane Lowe), the title The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is taken from a conversation he had with his friend about the musician Daniel Johnston, who has bipolar disorder.

In late December 2006, an unusual video was released for the instrumental track "Untitled", also known as "-", which mainly consists of a man spray painting a wall with "evil and good are raging Inside me" and correcting it to give the album title. On January 16, 2007, "Jesus Christ" was announced as being the official first single from the album. On January 19, the band performed the song on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. They performed it again on February 26 on the Late Show with David Letterman.

From January to June 2007, the band toured the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia, including a headline slot on the UK's Give It A Name festival and playing the main stage at The Bamboozle festival. Despite the band's reluctance towards the press around the time of the release of the album, they were featured in Alternative Press, a cover story for Rock Sound, Kerrang!, and NME. The band went on tour for the fall of 2007, with openers Thrice and MewithoutYou. In early 2008, Brand New toured Australia and New Zealand on the Big Day Out festival.

In October 2007, the band announced via their official website that a new song, entitled "(Fork and Knife)", would be released online on October 23, 2007. "(Fork and Knife)", a rerecorded version of the track formerly known as "Untitled 7" from the leaked demos, was released as a non-album digital download.

In March 2008, Brand New started their own record label, named Procrastinate! Music Traitors. The first act signed to the new label was longtime friend Kevin Devine. The first release from the label was a reissue of the 2006 Kevin Devine album, Put Your Ghost to Rest, in April 2008.