One Year, 100 Albums: #74 Brand New - Deja Entendu

Brand New Deja Entendu, 2003

I remember buying this on the day it came out. I got it at Planet Music in Virginia Beach which, at the time, was the closest music store to my house, although, now that I think about it, there was a Best Buy a little bit closer, so I don't know why I didn't go there. The point is moot now because 1) they built a Best Buy even closer than the other one and 2) I don't live in Virginia Beach anymore.

My friend and roommate Sophomore year (the year we had just finished when this album came out), Andy was into Brand New pretty early on, but "Last Chance to Lose Your Keys" was on a sampler from MACRock Freshman year. It may not have been the SAME sampler as the one I talked about with All-American Rejects, but it was certainly in the same stack of samplers we got that weekend.

Whatever. So, I was a big fan of Your Favorite Weapon. It was a favorite of the girl I had been dating Sophomore year and it had clever, caustic lyrics that really spoke to me. Still do, in fact. But overall, it was these kids from Long Island putting on angry/murderous masks.

Deja Entendu was a different beast altogether. It was as if they had taken off the masks and their actual faces were much darker than the scary masks they'd just removed. There is a richness to the shadows on this album. This was Brand New no longer slinging mud from the shallows. This was them diving in, rolling around, and pulling innocent bystanders in with them.

It's almost a concept album. It starts off idealistically, though intensely with the mantra of "Tautou" and then goes right into the innocence-lost anthem that is "Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades", perhaps one of the strongest songs on the album.

With his boyhood extracted (not necessarily willingly given), our main character ascends to the heights of hedonism and hubris ("Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't") and then plummets back to earth. He loses the girl ("The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot"), loved ones ("Guernica"), his inhibitions/ethics ("Me vs Maradona vs Elvis"), until finally he's lost everything and the album ends with him quietly contemplating the road that's led him here ("Play Crack the Sky").

I'd never really thought about why I enjoy the album so much until now, but I think it's because it serves as a lesson to keep my demons in check. "I've seen what happens to the wicked and proud, when they decide to try to take on the throne for the crown"is a lyric from "Jaws Theme Swimming" that references a dialogue between the angels that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play in Dogma where Damon is warning Affleck to control his hubris and not wage a war on God.

So I guess this album is basically saying, "You better check yourself, before you wreck yourself"

Brand New - Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades

Brand New - Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis

You can buy Deja Entendu at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes