*Insert obligatory joke about "Brand New" releasing brand new album!*

There’s a lot to be sad, upset, frustrated and livid about, nowadays. Goes without saying. That’s where entertainment comes in though, right? It’s an escape from all the sludge we wade through in reality. So pop in that “Brand New” CD (er- stream that stream) and….oh. Not much of an escape from all those negative feelings, I guess. In fact, after giving this album a few listens to, it turns out to be the opposite- when you dig into the lyrics of this new record, released without any warning or announcement 08/17/17 (leaving “Brand New” fans nationwide cerebrally hemorrhaging in joy), you find a lot of themes that are very relatable and pertinent to the madness happening around us in our world. But see, that’s a good thing. An emo record this may be, I see “Science Fiction” as a collection of songs that are both a joy to listen to and a way to help you make sense of the often scary world we live in today.

“Brand New” is a New York Alternative/Emo Rock band that got their start back in 2000. Quite a different music scene, then compared to now- “Nirvana” v. “Rihanna”. Walk into a “Hot Topic” today, remember what it was in 2006. You get the picture. They’re an interesting group, “Brand New”. As a band who never saw tons of radioplay, and one without an album released in 8 years since 2009’s “Daisy”, “Brand New’ has maintained the same unwavering, fiery passion and dedication from its fans. It can get almost cultish, really, how much "Brand New" fans like "Brand New".

A REAL LIFE EXAMPLE OF THE KIND OF FANS "BRAND NEW" HAS

In 2014, I spent 3 days in a crummy motel in Columbus, Ohio so I could see “Brand New” play a concert. The Motel was the type of place where the swimming pool stayed dry and empty all year long, where maybe you wouldn’t be shocked to find a dead body. The sort of joint with rooms you could smoke cigarettes in. Which we did, the few friends and I that drove the 400 miles to see “Brand New” play. Like good, perpetually disaffected-middle schoolers, we smoked our squares day and night, in the room and out. We were savagely broke, too. Hence the crummy Motel. So we weren’t exactly eating very well, or staying hydrated or any of that nonsense. “Eff that!”, we cried! What more do you need than nicotine and “Brand New”, right?

The venue “Brand New” played at is called “The Lifestyle Communities Pavilion”. For you Chicagoans, think of it like the “Metro”- not an arena sized place, but the kind of place that’s sizable, yet intimate enough that the band is close to you, on the General Admission floor. A closed space that allows the music to swell around you. To reverberate in your breastbone. A good place to see a band you really dig. Maximum occupancy 2200. On that day, I would guess there was 2500 people in that venue, if not 3000. As Dr. Tobias Funke so aptly put it, we were quite literally “ass to ankles” in the that room. Once “Brand New” came on the stage, the 3500 people in that tight space rushed forward, towards the stage. I got immediately separated from the three people I was with, lost in an ocean of screaming, similarly emotionally hyper-sensitive young people, all of whom were, verbatim, singing along with every single word uttered from Jesse Lacey’s(“Brand New”’s singer and songwriter) mouth. Chanting, you could say. It was July, also. A humid, Midwest summer day, in a 4000-strong, jam-packed box, with high ceilings whose ceiling fans you could just faintly feel ruffle the hair on the top of your head. In other words, you weren’t sure if you were soaked with your own sweat, or that of the 15 neighbors whose bodies were pressed damply against yours. It smelled how you’d imagined it smelled. But it was “Brand New”, so it was glorious. A killer show.

But so maybe an hour deep into an hour-thirty show, belly empty and after spending an hour jumping and screaming in what in essence became a sauna, I got the dizzies. My vision started blacking, and I knew I was a few sweat drops away from passing out. I tried to fight it, since the band was in the middle of one of their most powerful songs, and longest, too (“Limousine” for you “Brand New” fans). But so, dead center of that crowd which, forget the stupid joke above, honestly did look like 5000 perspiring bodies, not an inch of space between them, I decided I had to turn around and get some water. Like I had to. And not a single body moved. In part probably because no one really could move and make space. But there was intent there. As I squeezed my way between two dripping wet bodies, I was met with glares. For serious- looks of hate, or at least of utter disappointment and disgust. Like, ‘What kind of f***ing “Brand New” are you, leaving? Jesse is that way’ kinds of looks. And I can’t blame them, it was just that moment, skin slick and body trembling, vision spotted, it kind of felt like a life-or-death deal. It’s just that some “Brand New” fans might pick the latter instead of the former, when it comes to Jesse Lacey and the crew. I survived. But not in the eyes of my fellow “Brand New”-ers.

SO THE ACTUAL ALBUM NOW

I don’t know bass from treble when it comes to music. What I know is that I love “Brand New” as a band, have since I was 16 and a friend of mine burned me some CDs of theirs, CDs which, back then, were all I had in my car for a while. So most of “Brand New’s” discography has been cow-branded into my skull. So,+ this is less review and more recommendation.

The coolest thing about “Brand New” that their acolytes will tell you is that each album of theirs has a different kind of flavor to it, in sound and lyrical content; “Your Favorite Weapon’s” high school post-breakup angst, cheesy and cringey in all the best ways; “Deja Entendu’s” endlessly catchy, timeless choruses and verses, teenage angst blossoming into the adult variety; “The Devil and God are Raging Inside of Me” and its bleak, hollow sounds, wrestling to the ground the ideas and themes described in its title; finally “Daisy” with its violent swings from bitter rages to haunting somberness.

“Science Fiction” is no different. Granted, I have in no possible way been able to listen to it as much as their previous works, but, from my own and most of the furiously typed YouTube commenter’s opinions so far, “Science Fiction” immediately stands as an heir to the throne for ‘best “Brand New” album’. It’s generally agreed that “Daisy”, a good album regardless, was somewhat of a disappointing follow up to the colossal “Devil and God”, something that “Brand New” themselves have agreed with. “Science Fiction”, or perhaps something else entirely, had a planned 2016 release, but was scrapped before its birth, due to Jesse Lacey and the band agreeing that the Untitled 2016 record was nowhere near as good as “Devil and God”, an album they see as an achievement and use to judge subsequent works against. “Science Fiction” stands shoulder to shoulder with “Devil and God”, and was worth the 8 year drought in new music from the band.

The thing that stands out to me the most in listenings is both the acknowledgement of times passed by, and a sort of black mirror reflection of the modern, Donald Trump Right v. Left world we’ve come to know. We’ve got a track like “Desert”, sung from the perspective of a kind of embittered ‘character’, where we get lyrics like:

“I got my faith, I got my family,

I got a wire fence around my whole stake

If I believe only half what I read

I got a reason to be dug in deep”

Or even:

“Last night I heard a voice that said “don’t give up your gun”

They keep washing right up on those shores

Man they’re gathering their numbers up

Those bleeding hearts come marching down my road

Well I’ll be waiting right here at my door

It’s a lie to say it wouldn’t be fun

If you’re joining them then I got one

We don’t need money”

Which needs no analysis. You get it. But it’s perspective, a topical perspective, that “Brand New” hasn’t really tread upon before.

Another such example, a different sort of perspective than “Desert”, is the tune “137”, with its catchy, sing-song chorus of:

“Let’s all go play Nagasaki

We can all get vaporized

Hold my hand, let’s turn to ash

I’ll see you on the other side”

Whose meaning, again, is on the nose, but when done the way “Brand New” does it here on “Science Fiction”, doesn’t read as preaching or even really striking a stance. Simply a dead faced, fluorescent bathroom mirror reflection of the world we now live in. Which I think is something that the best sorts of arts and entertainments do- leaves you to draw your own conclusions and thoughts.

Social commentary aside, “Science Fiction” is a damn good record, diehard “Brand New” fan or otherwise. Earworm tunes with lyrics introspective, bittersweet, and poignant, something “Brand New” has always done amazingly, and continues to do here. This is not a review- simply a recommendation. Scratch that high school itch that still exists, inside your heart there. Because yes, you could listening to a band like “Brand New”, to most groups you could throw the alternative-rock, or emo label at, is wallowing, is choosing to sort of swim in sadness, to make yourself sad. And yes- this is “Brand New’s” last record. ‘2000-2018’, they say. So it’s sad in that aspect too- this album feels charged with finality, in a way. But there’s a reason music like this was as popular as it once was, as it still is, in “Brand New’s” case; it’s cathartic, redemptive. The final track is a song called “Batter Up”, whose chorus reads as follows, and promises regardless of the horror we read in the news everyday, or the sadness we have in our own lives, we will live on:

“It’s never going to stop

Batter up

Give me your best shot

Batter up”

Give this record a listen, y'all. It’s worth your time.