Aug. 01, 2012 - Issue #876: The Art Of Serving

Prevue

Brand New

Thu, Aug 9 (7 pm)
With Cursive, An Horse
Edmonton Event Centre, $43.75

Brand New has been cultivating a loyal following since striking punk-pop gold with its debut Your Favourite Weapon in 2001 and the stylistic leap of Deja Entendu, but now, the four-piece from Long Island is ready to strike off down a new path.
The band's latest release was Daisy in 2009, and while reports have circulated stating Brand New is working on a new album, lead singer and guitarist Jesse Lacey admits that the band has no set recording schedule in place. Brand New is free-flowing in the music business: the four-piece has cut ties with its label and management in favour of returning to its independent roots.
"I think that really allows us to explore every avenue we feel we need to musically," he says, noting that Brand New always retained creative control with its label, but that the reality of someone is funding an album is that they always have some degree of influence. "We had come full circle back to a point in our lives where we had really felt like the ideas that we had were more in line with where we started as a band."
Rather than launch right back into recording, Brand New has began working on the infrastructure in which it produces music and creating a stronger web presence for Procrastinate, its vehicle for projects with other artists. Lacey says it's not a label by any stretch, but rather, a way for Brand New to work on its own music and help fellow artists.
"I think we just want to have a place that people can go to hear our music as we release it and hear music of anyone that feels they want to work with us," Lacey notes, adding Brand New isn't looking to make a profit from the bands who work with them.

The return to the do-it-yourself approach for Brand New also marks a new chapter for its own music. Lacey has noted that Daisy was the end of a road for the band and it was time to backtrack. Daisy was a success for Brand New, but Lacey says while he enjoys the album, it also makes him anxious to listen to due its chaotic, noise-driven nature.
"When you decide to make noise and be chaotic, sometimes you sacrifice things like melody and order, and I think those things have places in our music as well," Lacey notes. "To get back there, it's kind of like we can't move forward, you have to move back and figure out where you left those things out and take a new course."
As for where this new course will lead, Lacey says the hopeful melancholy that has defined Brand New will continue, but content-wise, the songs will contain more conclusions than questions to life's conundrums. He attributes these answers to where he is at his current age, which is his early 30s, and having time to truly reflect.
"It's just in every year that goes by, you either come up with more questions for things or you start answering things and I think in the years spent in my life since the last time we recorded a record, I have both," he adds.
While there isn't a new record on the immediate horizon, Lacey acknowledges that fans need something new, and soon. While they still come to hear the songs that won them over, Lacey says Brand New can't continue performing the same tracks and hopes to unveil new material in the next year.
"We have this buzzing in us that we want to do things and I hope that we can see those things through," he says. "I think people expect more from us and I think we expect more from us."

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