Album review: Brand New: 'Daisy'

BRAND NEW: 'Daisy' (Interscope)

With ‘Daisy’, Brand New have finally achieved their ultimate goal. After years of blood, sweat and turmoil, of sleepless nights and tortured days contemplating the meaninglessness of existence, Jesse Lacey and his band of oh-so-merry men have successfully created the party album of the decade. Yes, that’s right boys and girls, clocking in at thirty-five minutes of purest pop brilliance, ‘Daisy’ is a veritable minefield of luscious choruses and irresistible hooks; the kind of album that the workers on your local building site will whistle, that will soundtrack the most poignant moments in American teen dramas like One Tree Hill and that you can play to your granny without fearing that she’ll suffer a heart attack.

Oh wait, that’s the new Boys like Girls record. Sorry, ‘Daisy’ is actually a miserably aggressive horror show of a record that trawls the darkest depths of the human psyche, exploring a world of desperation, loss and emotional catastrophe. Play this beast at a party and your guests are likely to start bashing each others’ brains in with the furniture. The album takes the misery and hopelessness of 2006’s astounding ‘The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me’ and reimagines it through musical cacophony; ‘heavy’ doesn’t even begin to describe the raw, distorted guitars and abrasive, crashing drums that pound at your earlobes throughout. This is less the sound of the defeated and more the sound of the disgusted: instruments are assaulted rather than played, and Jesse screams like Frank Carter’s demented second cousin twice removed over most of the tracks, obliterating any semblance of melody.

It sounds like a horrific listening experience but actually, it’s quite the opposite. Like a good car crash, you just can’t help but be fascinated by ‘Daisy’; to want to stare, self-destructively, at its twisted, repugnant carcass. The brutal tension that permeates the record is reminiscent of Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ or, better still, the Manics’ ‘The Holy Bible’: for all this is uncomfortable listening, it’s thoroughly captivating. Opener ‘Vices’ is so violent, you’re left windswept in its wake, while the extraordinarily visceral ‘Gasoline’, ‘Sink’ and ‘In A Jar’ do their best to hammer every semblance of sanity out of your poor, unsuspecting skull. This is the sound of flesh scraping against stone and it’s thoroughly unnerving. Just to compound matters, Brand New do their best to be contrary too: as ‘Vices’ explodes around you, the monotonic ‘Bed’ begins, sounding more like the long-lost sister of ‘Luca’ or ‘Jesus Christ’ than some sort of post-hardcore noise-fest. Consequently, you’re left waiting for it to erupt, for the feedback to kick in, but it never does, which is all the more disquieting.

Such juxtapositions only enhance 'Daisy's power. The epic ‘You Stole’ is so far removed from ‘Gasoline’ that it’s hard to believe it’s the same band. As the only discernible single on the record, ‘At The Bottom’ sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s a phenomenal track with a gargantuan chorus, invective and full of bile, but it never evidently tries to mess with your head. Instead, it manages to make lines like ‘If I wanted to die before I got old/I should’ve started some years ago, digging that hole’ sound positively catchy. And then, of course, there’s the thirties/forties female vocal that bookends the album, the antithesis of just about everything that is contained within.

Rumours indicated that ‘Daisy’ would be an unlistenable record, a self-indulgent piece from a band determined to be contrary. While this is certainly a difficult listen, an uncomfortable experience, it is also incredibly compelling: its aggressive musical palate and abrasive production are the perfect soundtrack to its miserable, repugnant themes. Thus, for all it can be painful to listen to, it is also extremely rewarding. This is an album that demands multiple listens, that won’t escape from your CD player for months, no matter how much you may want it to. It’s another almighty swerve from a band that just won’t sit still, that refuse to be what everyone wants them to be, and for that, they should be applauded. Fuck partying guys, let’s smash shit up. (9.5/10)