Review, Brand New at La Zona Rosa
Monday, July 3rd, found me at La Zona Rosa, a club in downtown Austin, where in the hundred-degree heat I waited to listen to the clever, dark work of Brand New. A band from the Jersey shore, their most recent album was Deja Entendu, which found their sharp lyrics married to Smiths-inflected guitar work and harder, harsher riffs, without relying on the new punk formula of their first record, Your Favorite Weapon.
The first track off Deja was the first song they played--more an atmospheric dabbling than a true song. "Tautou" drifts in on gentle guitar and a crash of cymbal, with Jesse Lacey's keen voice whispering "I'm sinking like a stone in the sea / I'm burning like a bridge for your body," and this couplet is repeated, first at a whisper, then a keening wail, as the lights pulsed. The crowd, mostly people younger than I, threatened to overwhelm the low vocals with their insistent yelling. As "Tautou" faded out into distortion, the band members waved, and a new guitar line broke out.
I've listened to Deja more than a few times, and know each of its songs--instrumentation and lyrics--like well-worn paths in the back yard, comfortable to tread, welcoming your presence. This guitar line was reminiscent of several but specifically none, and as such I can only presume it's off their upcoming record, which (if the t-shirts are accurate) called Fight Off Your Demons. It was darker, its verses sung tensely, building, only to erupt into screams and shouts.
La Zona Rosa is a small venue, walls around asphalt, and as such the acoustics left something to be desired, so I cannot say for certain if what I heard was really the literal content of the songs. But that chorus, that exploding guitar work, that crashing drums, the fluttering liquid bass, they were met with a throat-ripping wordless scream. A full-blooded furious scream that chilled the bone. Standing in a crowd of a thousand people watching the kaleidoscopic frenzy and the shattering lights onstage I felt the hairs on my arms stand on edge.
While Deja found more of its tracks played than their prior record, Brand New played their ode to teenage romance, "Soco Amaretto Lime," to the following cheers of the adolescent crowd. Having left high school and college behind me, the pathos and blatant youthful escapism were lost on me. The acoustic guitar graced Lacey's voice as the rest of the band left the stage.
But as with any concert, this was the false start before the encore, where the more violent, more insistent songs of their catalog came out to feed off the manic energy near midnight. It was here that the cognitive disconnect between the content of the songs and their audience was most readily apparent. "Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis," despite its non-sequitur title, is a story of a sexual predator, enticing and devouring the women in his path. The strumming guitar and the hushed vocals conjure the impression of quiet shadows and cold bedrooms, furtive encounters in the dark, strangers in the night trying to find what the empty winter sun cannot show them.
You laugh at every word, trying hard to be cute / I almost feel sorry for what I'm gonna do / And your hair smells of smoke / Who will cast the first stone? / You can sin or spend the night all alone.
The story of "Maradona" is that of an aggressive, deceitful male, of the posturing of these one-night stands, the futility of a meaningful encounter. Far from the male victimized by the loss of his virginity in "Sic Transit Gloria (Glory Fades)," the narrator of this song has found the most satisfying way of fulfilling his needs: Taking it from these girls, cultivating the impression of sensitivity, leaving behind him an abattoir bedroom of sweaty bodies and crying eyes.
You're using all your looks that you've thrown from the start / If you let me have my way, I swear I'll tear you apart / Cause it's all you can be / You're a drunk and you're scared / It's ladies night, all the girls drink for free
The girls in the audience, none older than 20, they cheered and they shouted, they screamed out the lines with Lacey, celebrating the story of their own exploitation. I listened, and waited for the coda's crashing noise, astounded by the song's warm reception.
I will lie awake, lie for fun / And fake the way I hold you / You'll fall for every empty word I say
The bitterness and the cynical aggression permeated their next song, "Seventy Times 7," a punkier, musically less ingenious concoction than most of their other work. But where the riffs fail to invent, the lyrics and their poison more than make up. "So have another drink and drive yourself home / I hope there's ice on all the roads / You can think of me when you forget your seatbelt / And again when your head goes through the windshield."
Appropriately their last song was "Play Crack the Sky," an extended metaphor of love as a ship sunk in the cold Atlantic, the narrator calling out "I am the one who haunts your dreams / Of mountains sunk below the sea / I spoke the words but never / Gave a thought to what they all could mean." Describing the end, eyes closed, Lacey lets the house lights die around him and with a wave and a thank-you left the stage.
Their live presence is strong, but there are still the hints of production work cleaning up their rougher edges on their albums. While a perfectly manicured appearance would no doubt seem stale and robotic, the intricate harmonies and the precise instrumentation is one of their strongest suits in their recorded work (excepting the freshman Weapon, which relies mostly on lyrical jabs to counteract its reliance on genre convention). But the vitality of the live scene is an unparalelled outlet, and theirs is a show not to be missed.