Hey hey it’s Saturday…
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[5.18]
Iain Mew: My brother’s top 3 last.fm artists: Marillion, Brand New, Fightstar. Improbably given that context, he’s definitely right on this one. Deja Entendu was an emo pinnacle and while their move further away from tunefulness here is initially a bit hard to stomach (the guy can sing when he wants), it starts to makes sense as it builds. By the breakdown I’m swept away with it, the yelling and angst reaching a point of no return, crushing guitar and tense, gripping gaps between smashed out beats. The moments of blissful reflection to close are a great touch too.
[8]
Kat Stevens: If I smoked, my lighter would be held in the air for at least 40 seconds of this emo nonsense.
[5]
Anthony Easton: Is anyone reminded of the Eagles? Can anyone defend the Eagles? It’s the stealth Jesus freak-folk where a conservative Christian ethic is hidden in indie sadness, so the obvious reference points would be like Sufjan Stevens, but this still hits all of my Eagle buttons.
[4]
Chuck Eddy: There’s a thickness to the sound here that reminds me why, when Dag Nasty’s Field Day opened my ears to emo in 1988, I compared their heart-on-sleeve churn to Husker Du and Boston. That’s a good thing. What’s not so good is that this song has basically no structure to speak of — no beginning, no end, just a sort of sleepwalk that plods on and on until the singer’s finished with his boring spiel. There’s not even enough rhythmic motion underneath to count as a drone.
[4]
Martin Skidmore: Whiney American rock could hardly be less my thing, and the trudging pace of most of this doesn’t help. There are some smart instrumental flourishes here and there, but mostly it is slow and depressing, and without any of the emotional force I think it’s seeking.
[2]
Dave Moore: If I was confronting someone who looked like they were actually gonna die before they got old, I don’t think I’d offer them “drugs on a silver platter.” ‘Course that assumes that this song is about something, which is probably a mistake, unless the message is just “life sucks and then you die or kill yourself.” False — as Hannah Montana taught me, life’s what you make it. So let’s make it rock!
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: A bit over a week ago, Andy Greenwald, the author of Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo — the closest thing emo has to a definitive history — tweeted, “Sometimes I can’t help but wonder why Brand New made the bold and visionary decision to stop writing songs in 2003.” His critique is fair, but misguided; Brand New’s first two albums were masterpieces of compact pop-punk tunesmithing, and the band has proved itself over the past six years determined to stuff any hint of those days firmly down the memory hole. But the gnarled, wary husk that remained grew into something quite different, yet just as fascinating. “At the Bottom” is one of new album Daisy‘s more accessible tracks, which isn’t saying much; like the rest of the album, it’s a concertedly ugly post-hardcore snarl that vacillates between quietly paranoid fretting and gigantic bursts of uncontainable hysteria. If that sounds like the old quiet/loud dynamic, that’s because it is, but the contrast lies not in volume or melodicism, but in the abrupt loss of emotional control the transition marks. “Something dark’s living down in my heart,” is the key lyric here, and the maniacal chorus is that darkness taking seed and sending tangled shoots up to the surface. As he has been for two albums now, Jesse Lacey is alarmingly obsessed with death, and the moments his fixation metastasizes from internal nightmare to crazed mantra are as compelling as his younger incarnation’s sly hooks and smart mouth.
[9]
Mordechai Shinefield: No surprise that Brand New ditched the emo platitudes that gave them a soft spot in my heart. So now they’re channeling the Meat Puppets?
[6]
Alfred Soto: He’ll serve me drugs on a silver plate? Delicious. He’s copying some of Isaac Brock’s vocal inflections? Good on him. Now if he could get his mates to cool it with the 3 Doors Down impressions, we’d have a fun evening out.
[4]
Anthony Miccio: Proof that rock has become some Shining-like vortex where sonic signifiers are meaningless: wordy, former Hot Topic snots try to evolve by applying a radio-ready sheen to the arty lurch and twang of Modest Mouse’s The Moon And Antarctica, only to wind up with something that could have opened for the Verve Pipe a decade ago.
[6]
John Seroff: Grungy saddo-rock saddled with rambling, occasionally ill-advised verbosity that unduly weighs down the thin and diverging guitar line. Engaging and explosive but never quite up to enjoyable.
[5]