Have you ever had that moment when you went back and revisited something you really enjoyed when you were younger, only to come away with a feeling of despondent ambivalence? Like, I remember thinking Street Sharks action figures looked so cool despite how objectively horrifying the commercial was and — okay this is a bad example because these toys are still rad as hell, but not everything from my past holds up that well, even when they weren’t things as trivial as buff shark action figures. I had this moment recently with a band that for a long time, was a very big part of my identity.
I want to tell you about Brand New.
Brand New was my favorite band in high school and the majority of my twenties. They were this ever evolving band that came out of Long Island, that in my mind, represented the pinnacle of the early 2000’s pop-punk scene. But it wasn’t just their first album, Your Favorite Weapon, a loud and brash pop-punk album with thoughtful lyrics and head bop-able melodies that made me a long time fan, it was that as I grew up their music grew up with me.
By the time their second album, Deja Entendu came out, they sounded like a vastly different band than they did before. It was a more effects and reverb driven album with lyrics that read like poetry and was a much darker and more earnest experience from top to bottom. Deja Entendu was an evolution that was emblematic of the band’s willingness and ability to change, whether it be out of artistic expression or just boredom with something they’ve already done.
That trajectory of stylistic and tonal evolution would kind of be their thing from album to album. That transformation was also aided by the fact that album releases were few and far enough between one another that I was a very different version of myself by the time a new record hit. It made it feel like every album was tailor made for me and my growth as a person, marking checkpoints in my life.
Over the past few years my relationship with Brand New and their lead singer, Jesse Lacey in particular, went from complicated to non-existent. Specifically the allegations about his grooming of underage women when he was younger, (a claim that he all but confirmed when he issued an apology for it) complicated things. You can read about it if you want to, but needless to say it was a real slap in the face for someone who at one point idolized this man’s ability to make music.
I’m not here to re-litigate that whole mess. What happened was gross and clearly the actions of a young man who bought into his own hype and took advantage of people where he could. People grow and people change, and I hope that this 40+ year old man isn’t the same person he was in his mid-twenties, but I don’t know him, nor do I care anymore. The worst part of all of this isn’t that he killed his own band with his actions, it’s that an actual human being has to live with the consequences the selfish things he did. In my mind this is settled law. Jesse Lacey sucks and did something horrible to someone. While he ruined a band that I loved, he actually did damage to another person out there, and that’s unforgivable to me.
It had been years since I actually listened to any of their songs, let alone sit through an entire album. I more or less purged them from my music rotation which was a difficult adjustment at first, but it eventually stuck. The errant song would pop on on Spotify from time to time, but rarely would I let it finish. It felt weird to listen to anything written by Lacey, not only because of what he did, but because of how much of an impact he had on my life.
I didn’t personally know the guy or anything, but I was so heavily influenced by Brand New and Lacey that I attribute them with the reason I ever learned how to play the guitar in the first place. They were the architects of my musical tastes and styles. They were my road-dogs whenever I went driving anywhere, whether it be an interstate trip or a quick jaunt to the supermarket. They meant so much to me at one point in my life, but now they can’t even get airtime on my personal radio stations.
Recently I was in a funk one night when one of their songs came on and it hit just right, leading me down a rabbit hole of binging these albums straight through without stopping. I had this musical relapse and for better and worse, I felt like I did when I was in high school — back when I could block out all the noise in my life with this music that “spoke to me.” But now as a thirty-something year old, with all the context and time that I could muster, their music rang hollow, doing little more than provide background noise.
I think that for the last few years my mentality had been pretty defeatist in the sense that I’d lament the fact that I ever was such a fan in the first place. I was upset that I’d ever had this feeling of hero worship that ultimately blew up in my face. It was that old saying of, “don’t meet your heroes,” come to life, despite never actually meeting any of them. But listening to these songs again I realized that while my relationship with their music will never be the same, I can’t ignore the fact that they did mean a lot to me at one point. It was this weird moment where I had to come to terms with everything that happened and just accepted Brand New‘s latest role in my life: They were important once and influenced me a lot, and now they aren’t and don’t matter.
It was actually kind of nice to re-listen to their final album, Science Fiction, because this far removed from its release and the general concept of being a fan of theirs, it turns out that I don’t think it’s a very good album. A younger version of myself is screaming at me for ever considering this “wildly erroneous” take, but it’s just not that good. It has a few decent tracks, but overall it feels like the last desperate gasp of a band who was ready to call it quits anyway. Science Fiction, along with the album before it, Daisy, (which I do think is a good album) had a real nasty tendency to insert a bunch of non-music bullshit into every single one of their tracks, making casual listening an absolute chore.
For instance, Daisy opens with a grainy, old-timey gospel song that halfway through explodes into a mess of screeching wails and sickly guitar riffs. Meanwhile, Science Fiction opens with a recording of someone describing their dream, although the song that it fades into is pretty good. I understand these are supposed to be thematic mood setters, but they only ever hit once if ever at all, and I am well past the point of being mesmerized by that stuff. It all feels so pompous and self important. I can appreciate the artistry and talent of a song just fine without having to skip the first minute-and-a-half of scratchy audio that’s been inserted because it’s “deep” or whatever.
That’s not just a Brand New thing, that was a huge trend for indie rock albums of that era that was always terrible. It feels like they don’t want you to be able to just listen to a song and move on, but I guess it is kind of a moot point to complain about albums that came out so long ago. Ultimately these are the kinds of things that I failed to notice, (or willingly overlooked) as a once staunch defender of this band that really standout now.
I’ve never really spoken about any of this to anyone, probably because I was really the only person I knew who was that into Brand New. And sure, this isn’t important or world changing stuff, but it feels nice to actually articulate my feelings about all of this considering I don’t think my recent thoughts about the band or the singer went beyond, “fuck that guy.” Let me be clear, “fuck that guy” is still in full effect, but I can’t try to undo the impact his band had on me as a young man. I am grateful for their musical influence but can never reclaim my joy of listening to them again.
The Bonus World 