Brand New Band • Page 159

They never used double cutaway les Paul's. Vin owned some Paul Reed Smith guitars in the early stages that just appear sort of similar to Les Pauls because the pickups look similar to the Gibson Alnicos. Totally different animal. And man, every guitar has a time and a place. I have an American Ash Tele like Jesse used and it is a fantastic guitar, it can literally get any sound that isn't heavy metal if you pair it with a natural sounding tube amp. They were using Matchless amps which is one of the best boutique amp makers on the market. There's nothing wrong with the equipment they used.

Sure there has been a shift that suits their later music and takes after more Sonic Youth influence, but if anything I think they used the right gear for the job on Deja. They wanted to make a deeper, more mature pop/rock record and got really luscious, thick layers of sound to express the complicated emotions of self doubt and guilt of a 20 something who doesn't yet know who he is or what he wants.

Your Favorite Weapon primarily relied on a Marshall JCM800 as its main amp so maybe you just like a sharper, rougher guitar tone instead of one that sounds rounder and more organic.

 

Youtube them at Warped Tour 2003. Vin played a Gibson

 

Oh I'm talking about during the recording. They had a blog going on their website at the time that detailed the equipment they used on the record.

I do agree their live sound has improved drastically.

 

Word. Yeah whatever gear they had then with the mix on Deja, compared to what they had on top of the mix for Devil and God, it's no contest that Devil and God took it to a whole other level. If anything it's cool that they've always worked with Sapone and we're able to hear how everyone grew sonically.

 

I honestly think that TDAG just had two things that separate it:

1) more ambitious production, it wasn't just double track these rhythm guitars, turn up the mic underneath the snare to give it more body, etc. They actually tried to use room microphones and play with the distance between the source of the sound and where it gets picked up. You can hear it in how the reverberations from the drums and the noisy lead guitar parts echo through the whole mix. For one thing it was recorded differently, and in a much more difficult and professional way, that likely was only accessible to them once they hit the stride of their success.

2) The mastering is without a doubt better. And that plays a bigger part than people think, has nothing to do with Mike Sapone or the stuff they used, it's just high class fine-tuning that only relatively big, major label bands have access to. Deja Entendu was released on Triple Crown Records, TDAG came after the acquisition by major label Interscope Records, again this extends more opportunities in the recording industry. Its the difference between paying for another 2 days of studio time for the recording engineer to master it himself/bring a guy he knows in to do it, and paying 50,000 dollars for one of the best mastering engineers on the east coast haha. The sound translates better and more consistently across all speakers, you can hear each layer pristinely and the sound never gets clouded or muddled in the same EQ range, the vocals are extremely present and clear and never sound overly compressed, those are things that come out of recording in a more expensive studio and amplified by top of the line mastering.

It's not the equipment. As a fan of a lot of lower fidelity indie rock I actually like imperfect recordings because the one thing you do retain is the absolute raw character of that amp and how the guitarist strummed the strings. Just listen to the grit of the bass and the smooth, hollow croon of the jazzy guitar parts on "Jaws Theme". It doesn't need to have a noticeable amount of reverb or a touch of that 3k Hertz treble. It grooves as it is and you actually FEEL the bass guitar more on that album like you would live.

 

Just wish you could hear the guitars better on sic transit. Besides the bass of course.

 

much bigger people than Brand New have done AMAs

 

Is it just me or do people have a really hard time grasping the idea that he wants them to keep singing "Just jealous cause we're young and in love" while he sings the other part. He even told them to and they still didn't get it. Haha.

 

That's not true

kidding:)

 

I am Barack Obama, President of the United States -- AMA • www.reddit.com

 

Nothing beats Brand New's reactions to fans trying to clap along to stuff. I remember one Untitled Jam encore in 2007 where Vinnie was vigorously shaking his head "no" when the crowd started a clap because he was trying to get the opening loops right.

 

I don't know tho cuz Jesse hasn't run 4 president yet u cant rilly know if bo-boma is more popular cuz honestly we just don't know

 

If Brand New's AMA was on this website, it would probably crash the servers.

 

Cause the God I believe in never worked on a campaign trail

 

Nothing will ever crash the Chorus servers you neanderthals, this isn't absolute punk est. 1805 and running on a hamster in a wheel

 

I know this is the lyric -- and it's a fantastic lyric -- but does anyone else hear "Cause the God I believe in worked on a campaign trail?" I'm sure this has been discussed.

 

I read it online once as "Cause the God I believe in, he worked on a campaign trail" It really fits either way though.

 

Jesse's vocals on the chorus to Archers always reminded me of Patrick Stump. (Also, that is a good lyric)

 

I've found that the lyrics on Genius are often wrong, if that's where you saw it.

 

WHERE IS MY TRIGGER MY MIND ERASERR

 

trigger?

 

Lol if that's not the lyric then frick me for the past 7 years

 

*shrink

 

WRONG BRAND NEW LYRICS IN ALL CAPS

Fml

 

IAAN on AltNation today.