Brand New - Science Fiction (August 17, 2017) [ARCHIVED] Album • Page 131

Posting this here too, because sometimes I forget there are Brand New threads outside of the Supporter forum.




Okay. Here I go.

I've been around music for 28 years. I discovered a love for music, and an actual appreciation for musicianship in the early '00s. I discovered many of the bands that are now staples in my listening habits, and several that I've allowed to fade out of my iterative collection.

Now is not the time to compare or rank Science Fiction against anything else. Especially not against my favorite album of all time, The devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, an album that literally effected the course of my life, and would establish Brand New as not only my favorite band or musicians, but my favorite group of artists.

While their fourth album, Daisy, had its own effect on me at a crucial point of my life, it never truly stood a chance against the sheer magnitude to which The devil and God impacted me personally. I never thought I would ever feel the crescendos of music like that ever again, but then Manchester Orchestra came at me with A Black Mile to the Surface. Whatever I had been anticipating from Brand New seemed distant and shallow.

Since Brand New's last album in 2009, these 8 years have been spent growing into the man that I am, now a husband and a father, doing exactly what I love for a living. As I spent the better part of 2016 fretting here and there over what my favorite band could be doing, I wasted a lot of time, precious time, while they created this. I was burned by entitled expectation of a band that never owed me anything.

I am in a simultaneous state of being at loss for words and being overwhelmed by them. I have expended many words already, but they are essential to the thought I am articulating.

While Science Fiction remains to face the test of time, I can already feel today settling itself to be remembered in a decade. The exhilaration of an album cycle that would seemingly never end. Yet here it is, a wild week, a surprise drop album drop, and it is in my ears for a third spin. Expectations so lofty they could never be met, but they were. Resoundingly so.

Every single track reminding why I believed, and have believed for a decade, Brand New to truly be the best at what they do. A minor quibble on a few lyrical choices, sure, but that's because I do not love cursing in my music.

Vin's raging guitar solos, the groove of Garrett's bass lines, the punch of Brian's percussion, and the lyrical / vocal blend of singing and screaming from Jesse that drew me in as a devoted listener in the first place... all create an album that will surely grow on me and with me through the years, but it does not need to. I already love it.

Science Fiction is everything that this artform should be. It solidifies Brand New with a discography that they should take the utmost pride in. It is clear that they poured their hearts and souls into it. A final album that could, in its own right, be the beginning of something if they let it.

It's finished.

 

What's most amazing to me right now is that this didn't leak in any fashion before today. What the fuck. That is super impressive. How the hell is that even done in 2017 with all the wankers and whatnot out there trying to find new music and be the first to release it. Incredible the band kept this under wraps like they did.

 

Sorry that people keep asking, can someone post the lyrics link again?

 

Who the fuck is messing with the lyrics in the google doc

 

I showed my eight-year-old nephew Luca a few weeks ago and he literally pissed himself

 

Second listen ending and my top three is "Waste," "Could Never Be Heaven" and "451". "Desert" is the easy (and only) low point

 

Wrong wrong thread!

 

HAHAHAHAHAHA

 

It's because the CD doesn't ship until October.

Kayne and Jay-Z did the same with Watch the Throne where it didn't leak as it was digital only to begin with.

 

I hope I get the bootleg cd tomorrow I did purhcase that vinyl really early

 

I was wondering when I would get to read your thoughts. Thanks for sharing man

 

On my 8th listen and No Control is still by far my least favorite on the album.

 

It really saddens me now as I listen to Batter Up that this is the last new BN song I'll ever hear. What a journey this band has been and how I loved it.

 

The Narrator isn't speaking for Jesse and the band. It's from the perspective of a fundamentalist christian. The last words in the song are a refutation of this type of thinking. "God is Love."


It's also rejected in the following song. Here's the original quote:

"I seen those boys kissing boys

with their mouth in the street

But I raised my son to be a righteous man,

I made it clear to him what fear of god means


I’d hold him down on the Tompkins Lake

Before I ever let him go to the wolves

The path we walk is only narrow and straight

No son of mine will wander astray

Abomination"


And from the next track:

"For the good of all man

Hold me down

Underwater and don’t let me up again"

 

What?!?!?!?!?

Desert is top 4 on the album! But I agree about Could Never Be Heaven and 452, both of those are in my top 4 along with Batter Up.

 

It's so sad to me that the instrumental at the end of No Control wasn't turned into a song.

Could have added one more song and made a YFW mixed with the new sound type throwback track. Would be amazing to see.

 

Anyone else think of "science fiction DOUBLE feature"

 

Any YFW traces on this album would have been very weird to hear

 

The line in Batter up "The road died in your throat" I assume is about someone dying of throat cancer? Seems to be several pretty heavy themes on this album which I love

 

Wonder if it was a song that would've ended up on the version of this album where IAAN was the single

 

Tired of touring. Tired of singing.

 

See my previous post.


EDIT: So, I just came across the drama. To be clear: I'm not telling you how to feel, just giving my interpretation.

 

That would make sense, I could see that.

Im envisioning a song that's not completely like YFW but takes a more punk vibe like the instrumental starts going towards but also mixing it with the new sound. On my first listen (I had the 1 track version), I got SUPER hyped for that track and it ended up not being a song :/

 

ahh yeah that would make sense also, sad it's coming to an end but I understand

 

Really? After all you've said about your afinity for pop punk, I would have guessed that would be one of your favourites because of how hooky and sort of "typical" it is despite having a lot of weight behind it. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm talking down to you or the song, because it's one of my favourites and I think it's really cool how YFW is your favourite album by them. Just curious, what are your favourite songs on the album?

You're really holding out hope for another album come October aren't ya