1. As much as I like to combat this idea, I will most likely always be a nerd. That includes being awkward and less than hip. I make somewhat of an effort to dress fashionably but I tend to not venture away from the t-shirt/sweatshirt and jeans combo that is so comfortable. And I'm fine with that. I don't really care how great I'm dressed as long as I'm not noticeably out of fashion. So no Hawaiian shirts or jorts for me.
2. I am fascinated by English. The language that is, not the malt liquor or the Denver Nugget great. i don't always use it correctly though and that's on purpose. I like to use words that aren't really words but sound like words like ungood and cromulent (Simpsons reference!). I'm pretty sure awkwardity isn't a word but I like to use that instead of awkwardness because the -ness suffix is overused. Yeah I'm weird.
3. I always start growing a beard but rarely realize it looks terrible. Part of it is a disdain for shaving and part of it is a desire to have a bad ass beard. But it just grows in all patchy and gross. Me after a week of not shaving looks far too white trash for my liking. But again, lazy.
4. My taste in music has become fairly good I think. I used to have terrible taste and some of that is still evident in songs I have in my library. I think that has been eliminated for the most part now so hooray. I don't have the hipster taste with a bunch of band no one has heard of but I don't go completely mainstream either. I just listen to what I like.
5. I like to think I am funny most of the time. Or at least self deprecating when necessary. As a result, I try to make most of what I write publicly at least somewhat humorous if seriousness isn't necessary. As such I try to make whatever I write at least be interesting or original. This mainly involves Facebook stati. So at least if my statuses are frequent they will be original or humorous to me or people who like me and not annoying. If it's annoying, whoopsies.
6. I like to write things but most often the things I write are about me and most people don't care about me. I don't mean to say that in a mean or emo way, it's just that to a certain extent it's true with everyone. I don't always read other people's personal things because they don't apply to me. It's slightly egotistical and such but that's how life is.
Anyway I would write more but I don't always think I have the best writing style. I can't always articulate what I'm thinking nor do I always write as much as I think I will be able to about a subject. It's a good thing I don't need to write much for school. What's that? I do? Oh...
7. This goes with the overarching theme of this post but my interaction with others is often more limited than I'd like. Part of this is the awkward and not thinking people really care about me but part of it is also liking to be alone a lot of the time. A lot of it is not wanting to come on to strong, even in the case of close friends. I just don't like to be that guy that people talk to out of pity or out of social norm necessity. I don't like that whole potential rejection thing so I tend to keep to myself. But the line between too much and too little talking to someone is really thin for me for some reason.
8. My reading basically consists of sports blogs and humor books. I don't know if high school English soured me on actual books or if I just have the short attention span my generation has built itself upon. I don't necessarily dislike reading but I always seem to find something I'd rather be doing for some reason. Sorry Kurt Vonnegut. I promise someday I'll read you.
9. I really cannot wait to turn 21. Part of this is for the obvious woo-hoo beer thing. But it's more than that. So many things seem to be contingent on being 21 and that's annoying. I don't like having to drink whatever is available or sneak around about drinking and as a result I don't really drink that often. Part of it is also wanting to grow up. On the one hand, it seems like so long ago that I was in high school. On the other hand, it's weird to almost be an adult.
10. No matter how well I do in school, I'll always feel like I could've done better or that I didn't work hard enough to earn the grade I got. Part of this is nice because I don't have to necessarily work that hard to get good grades and I'll always have that drive to succeed. But it also sucks because I'm not as happy with my grades as some people would be. I'm not pouting if I don't get straight A's but I also deep down feel like I am capable of doing that and that I could achieve that if I spent less time horsing around on the internet or whatever else I do. But that's who I am and that's how I've done things for pretty much my entire academic career. As nice as it would be to change, I'm pretty set in how it is now and it hasn't stopped working yet. I guess it's good to never feel like you have earned what you've done since it motivates you to try to do more.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
I want so badly to believe that there is truth and love is real
Love is perhaps the most subjective of all feelings. Everyone has a different opinion on what love is or even whether it exists at all. I don't know why I've thought about it lately. Maybe it's just an overdose on Ben Gibbard.
Anyways, my take on love. I don't think that anyone has one true love or one soul mate. There are just too many people out there for there to be one person for you. That isn't to say that you can't find someone you love but there's not a person you are destined to be with, as nice as that would be. When I think about it, what if that person lives in a remote Laotian village or something? What are the chances of you actually meeting that person? Love is just something that happens. It's not something that's meant to happen though.
I've heard it said that you don't stop loving someone or you can't love more than one person in your life for the love to be real. I don't agree. I have only really loved one person in the romantic sense and I certainly don't love them anymore and they don't love me. But I know that I did love them. And I, slightly less strongly, believe she did love me. And she probably loves someone else now or is on her way to loving someone else. And I know that at some point I will love someone else. This doesn't change or cheapen what we felt for each other months ago. Circumstances just changed. And though she thankfully isn't part of my life, she was an important chapter in my life and I won't forget that chapter.
There are obviously differently degrees of love. There's familial love, friendly love and romantic love. And within those different degrees. I'm honestly not sure when something changes from like to love to in love. It's just something you know when you feel it I suppose. I don't know that I have ever personally been "in love" but there is a difference.
Keeping with the vaguely related paragraphs theme, I don't think love is merely a thing made up by Hollywood or the greeting card industry or whatever. I'm not that cynical. I don't think you can only love one person in your life. You can only love one person at once, obviously, but certainly not ever. Things change. People change. The feelings you had don't. And while at times finding someone to love is insanely frustrating and seems impossible, it ultimately is possible. But it's not something you can force. And that's what makes it so difficult and frustrating because as much as you would like to make things happen, it takes two to love.
I don't know that I've said anything too profound here or even necessarily that original. But I am at my core a romantic in this sense and I think about this more often than you might think. And listening to Give Up so much lately likely hasn't helped. if you have to take away one thing, let it be that love is an amazing thing that can't really be quantified. While it's not fate in the sense that we all have a soul mate, sometimes it's just a thing that develops.
Anyways, my take on love. I don't think that anyone has one true love or one soul mate. There are just too many people out there for there to be one person for you. That isn't to say that you can't find someone you love but there's not a person you are destined to be with, as nice as that would be. When I think about it, what if that person lives in a remote Laotian village or something? What are the chances of you actually meeting that person? Love is just something that happens. It's not something that's meant to happen though.
I've heard it said that you don't stop loving someone or you can't love more than one person in your life for the love to be real. I don't agree. I have only really loved one person in the romantic sense and I certainly don't love them anymore and they don't love me. But I know that I did love them. And I, slightly less strongly, believe she did love me. And she probably loves someone else now or is on her way to loving someone else. And I know that at some point I will love someone else. This doesn't change or cheapen what we felt for each other months ago. Circumstances just changed. And though she thankfully isn't part of my life, she was an important chapter in my life and I won't forget that chapter.
There are obviously differently degrees of love. There's familial love, friendly love and romantic love. And within those different degrees. I'm honestly not sure when something changes from like to love to in love. It's just something you know when you feel it I suppose. I don't know that I have ever personally been "in love" but there is a difference.
Keeping with the vaguely related paragraphs theme, I don't think love is merely a thing made up by Hollywood or the greeting card industry or whatever. I'm not that cynical. I don't think you can only love one person in your life. You can only love one person at once, obviously, but certainly not ever. Things change. People change. The feelings you had don't. And while at times finding someone to love is insanely frustrating and seems impossible, it ultimately is possible. But it's not something you can force. And that's what makes it so difficult and frustrating because as much as you would like to make things happen, it takes two to love.
I don't know that I've said anything too profound here or even necessarily that original. But I am at my core a romantic in this sense and I think about this more often than you might think. And listening to Give Up so much lately likely hasn't helped. if you have to take away one thing, let it be that love is an amazing thing that can't really be quantified. While it's not fate in the sense that we all have a soul mate, sometimes it's just a thing that develops.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Life
I haven't written a lot about myself lately. That is partly because the point of this blog hasn't been for personal stuff, partly because of school prioritizing over personal writing about partly because I haven't had anything to process. But I think a state of the John is a good thing to assess every now and then.
Right now I feel great about my life and who I am. If you have been too close to me these past few months, you'll know that this is a great departure from even a couple months ago. I feel good about who I am and where I'm going. I'm excited for a lot of things I have coming up and that's an important thing to have.
I look forward to my road trip to California next week. This will be my first real road trip to somewhere farther than Portland or Vancouver without my family. It's something I've always wanted to do and I know that it will be a lot of fun.
I look forward to my new job. For many reasons, this is one of the most important things that needed to happen. Target had become a place I had no desire to go to and was just trudging through every time I worked. And while I'll miss a number of people there, there are still too many ghosts of bad things there and I don't make nearly enough nor am I given nearly enough responsibility to have to deal with that. Leaving Target is the last step for me in what has been a long process and I'm really happy about it. It's bittersweet in that I've been there for almost 4 years and I am grateful for them giving me my first job and for taking me back after I quit the first time but it will be great to have a job that might connect to something I want to do with the rest of my life and with something I have an immense passion for. Might I get burned out with the Mariners too? It's possible. But at least I will be getting consistent, predictable hours and will have a passion for what I'm selling and who I'm working for. And won't have the possible awkwardities that come from Target. I will miss a number of the people who I've worked with but Facebook will allow us to keep in touch. Yay modern times!
I look forward greatly to my hopeful study abroad opportunity over the summer in Spain. It's going to be really challenging basically just being placed into a foreign country with less than a mastery of the native language but I think it will be the best way for me to master Spanish. It's also part of the college experience I want to, well, experience myself. I always hear about how someone has spent a semester abroad somewhere or how their sister is in Sydney for the winter or something and I am immensely jealous. Well not jealous as that's too strong of a word, but it makes me think "I really should do that". And I am going to. Am I a little scared of it? Of course. It's a completely new experience. But I'm not exactly a risk taker and this is a risk, albeit not a giant one, that is really worth taking. I worry that it will affect my new job but I think this opportunity is a lot more important than that job, for more reasons than I have to study abroad for my minor.
I look forward to taking a leadership role in Model UN. It's weird how I've sort of taken the reins of our school club and am going to be the president next year but I'm going to embrace it fully. I want our club to flourish and grow. I hope that more people realize that MUN isn't as rigid and uninviting as it apparently gives off. Most people are just doing it for fun and aren't super intense about it. I've met people I'd otherwise never be able to meet through it and I've been able to do non-businessy things with my college career which is a bonus.
Mostly, I look forward to my future, both academically and professionally. It's nice to be legitimately interested in the classes I will be taking and not just taking them because I have to. I can't wait to be able to take my econ electives and learn more about the subject. I've realized that I've got a lot more ability to succeed than I've given myself credit for. I've always known I've been smart but I always assumed that I would drop off at some point and that my intelligence wouldn't carry me forever. That hasn't happened yet. I've been able to adapt and study hard when I need to and I've been able to evaluate how well I actually know things. I feel like I'm pretty well developed in an academic sense and in a professional sense. I'm never going to be someone who's going to make a complete ass of himself at an interview or with a cover letter, mostly just because I know what is expected, both through what I've learned in school and through intuition. I might not get every job or every interview because I'm not perfect and no one gets every job but I feel like my common sense and general idea of what to do in situations will carry me. My ability to improvise and roll off an answer to a question that I might not have prepared for directly is an important one. These are skills I was unsure about. Am I still worried about when it comes time to work in the real world and start earning a salary? Of course. But I know that I'll have the skill set necessary and know what I need to do to at least get my foot in the door somewhere and gain that experience.
At this point, I'm not as dreary about myself and my outlook on life and my interactions with others as I was a while ago. I realize that I'm always going to be a little socially awkward and am not always going to come off as outgoing. I'm fine with that. That's who I am. I know enough to not be a social pariah and outcast and that's enough for me. I have a pretty decent amount of friends and a varied enough amount of friends to know that I'm not that weird kid that no one likes. I've shifted my thinking from thinking that people don't talk to me because they don't like me to that they don't talk to me because they don't know me and haven't talked to me before. Does this mean everyone likes me? No. Far from it. But at this point I realize that it's just a personality difference or a lack of contact more than something that's wrong with me and I think that's important to realize.
Yay being happy and optimistic again.
Right now I feel great about my life and who I am. If you have been too close to me these past few months, you'll know that this is a great departure from even a couple months ago. I feel good about who I am and where I'm going. I'm excited for a lot of things I have coming up and that's an important thing to have.
I look forward to my road trip to California next week. This will be my first real road trip to somewhere farther than Portland or Vancouver without my family. It's something I've always wanted to do and I know that it will be a lot of fun.
I look forward to my new job. For many reasons, this is one of the most important things that needed to happen. Target had become a place I had no desire to go to and was just trudging through every time I worked. And while I'll miss a number of people there, there are still too many ghosts of bad things there and I don't make nearly enough nor am I given nearly enough responsibility to have to deal with that. Leaving Target is the last step for me in what has been a long process and I'm really happy about it. It's bittersweet in that I've been there for almost 4 years and I am grateful for them giving me my first job and for taking me back after I quit the first time but it will be great to have a job that might connect to something I want to do with the rest of my life and with something I have an immense passion for. Might I get burned out with the Mariners too? It's possible. But at least I will be getting consistent, predictable hours and will have a passion for what I'm selling and who I'm working for. And won't have the possible awkwardities that come from Target. I will miss a number of the people who I've worked with but Facebook will allow us to keep in touch. Yay modern times!
I look forward greatly to my hopeful study abroad opportunity over the summer in Spain. It's going to be really challenging basically just being placed into a foreign country with less than a mastery of the native language but I think it will be the best way for me to master Spanish. It's also part of the college experience I want to, well, experience myself. I always hear about how someone has spent a semester abroad somewhere or how their sister is in Sydney for the winter or something and I am immensely jealous. Well not jealous as that's too strong of a word, but it makes me think "I really should do that". And I am going to. Am I a little scared of it? Of course. It's a completely new experience. But I'm not exactly a risk taker and this is a risk, albeit not a giant one, that is really worth taking. I worry that it will affect my new job but I think this opportunity is a lot more important than that job, for more reasons than I have to study abroad for my minor.
I look forward to taking a leadership role in Model UN. It's weird how I've sort of taken the reins of our school club and am going to be the president next year but I'm going to embrace it fully. I want our club to flourish and grow. I hope that more people realize that MUN isn't as rigid and uninviting as it apparently gives off. Most people are just doing it for fun and aren't super intense about it. I've met people I'd otherwise never be able to meet through it and I've been able to do non-businessy things with my college career which is a bonus.
Mostly, I look forward to my future, both academically and professionally. It's nice to be legitimately interested in the classes I will be taking and not just taking them because I have to. I can't wait to be able to take my econ electives and learn more about the subject. I've realized that I've got a lot more ability to succeed than I've given myself credit for. I've always known I've been smart but I always assumed that I would drop off at some point and that my intelligence wouldn't carry me forever. That hasn't happened yet. I've been able to adapt and study hard when I need to and I've been able to evaluate how well I actually know things. I feel like I'm pretty well developed in an academic sense and in a professional sense. I'm never going to be someone who's going to make a complete ass of himself at an interview or with a cover letter, mostly just because I know what is expected, both through what I've learned in school and through intuition. I might not get every job or every interview because I'm not perfect and no one gets every job but I feel like my common sense and general idea of what to do in situations will carry me. My ability to improvise and roll off an answer to a question that I might not have prepared for directly is an important one. These are skills I was unsure about. Am I still worried about when it comes time to work in the real world and start earning a salary? Of course. But I know that I'll have the skill set necessary and know what I need to do to at least get my foot in the door somewhere and gain that experience.
At this point, I'm not as dreary about myself and my outlook on life and my interactions with others as I was a while ago. I realize that I'm always going to be a little socially awkward and am not always going to come off as outgoing. I'm fine with that. That's who I am. I know enough to not be a social pariah and outcast and that's enough for me. I have a pretty decent amount of friends and a varied enough amount of friends to know that I'm not that weird kid that no one likes. I've shifted my thinking from thinking that people don't talk to me because they don't like me to that they don't talk to me because they don't know me and haven't talked to me before. Does this mean everyone likes me? No. Far from it. But at this point I realize that it's just a personality difference or a lack of contact more than something that's wrong with me and I think that's important to realize.
Yay being happy and optimistic again.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
My Favorite Bands: Brand New
There are a few bands that no matter how often I listen to their songs, I don't get tired of them. In this (likely sporadically updated) series, I will cover the few bands that I can listen to for weeks on end. I'm usually pretty picky about what I listen to and after a few days of listening to an artist or album I'll move on to something else. These artists have staying power for my short attention span, however.
The very first Brand New song I heard was probably Sowing Season or Jesus Christ. Sowing Season probably just in passing because it was one of their more popular songs. Jesus Christ was the first one I downloaded, at the recommendation of one Nathan Smith. It is a wonderful song, though wonderful is probably a strange word to describe it. I'm not very good at interpreting song lyrics and Jesse Lacey is a fantastic song writer but the song seems more or less like a simile between what the singer is going through and the crucifixion of Jesus. There might be more or fewer religious overtones than I see but I mainly see the religious part as a metaphor for what he's going through.
So anyway, that was my first exposure to the band, towards the end of my senior year of high school. Three years after The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me was released and three months before their newest album, Daisy, was released. Most of my favorite bands have come from me getting in to their music long after its been released. I'm like the anti-hipster in that sense. "I discovered this after anyone was still listening to it". So, yeah, I can't say I wss their first big fan or anything.
I had Jesus Christ for about a month before I downloaded Deja Entendu. I don't know why I waited so long. Probably just dealing with all the shit that goes on in the last month of senior year. (Note that I looked up the dates I added these songs in my iTunes library and that I don't have a freakish memory for this.) Anyway, possibly as a result, Deja Entendu is probably my favorite album of theirs.
I wish I could explain why. I guess because it's still a degree of pissed off but not as high-school-feeling as Your Favorite Weapon, their first album, but also not as heavy and dark as The Devil and God... or Daisy. One of my favorite Brand New songs is "Okay I Believe You, but My Tommy Gun Don't". First because what an awesome title. Second, it's a ridiculously fun and funny song. Jesse Lacey is pretty clearly poking fun at everyone in music who're so full of themselves. My favorite line is probably "My tongue's the only muscle in my body that works harder than my heart" just because of how ridiculously over the top it is with how sincere and great of a writer/singer he is.
Deja Entendu is just great to listen to all the way through. This is where my lack of ability to talk about why I like music comes in but pretty much every element of it is great in my eyes. I guess I'm a sucker for overdubbing and harmonies (I guess you can call them that). The type of screaming, again I'm not sure if you can call it that, on this album is the kind that I actually like. Lacey has a ton of vocal range. If I had to pick a few songs for you to listen to from the album besides the one I already names, I'd go with "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows", "Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades" and "Good to Know That if I Ever Need Attention All I Have to Do is Die". Hooray long titles.
So after a month of Deja Entendu, I bought The Devil and God... It's a very different album than Deja Entendu, much darker, much heavier. I am, again, terrible at interpreting meaning but pretty much all the songs are about shitty things happening and how they are dealt with. I am oversimplifying a lot. One of the things I like most about this album is how jarring some of the songs are. I'd explain it but here's an example of what I'm talking about.
It's amazing how the song goes from a relatively soft song to Lacey just screaming his lungs out. Whenever I listen to this song now, I'm waiting for that moment in the song because it's the best part. It's a dark song but there are times where you want someone out of your life that badly. But just the juxtaposition of that relative calm with the rawness that comes out of it is something I'm a sucker for. That kind of thing is a trademark of this album. I love a song that can scare the shit out of me like that.
This album is ridiculously good beyond that one song. It's obviously depressing, given the title. The character singing (I guess that's how I've always seen it) is going through varying stages of shit, from depressing to pining for lost opportunities to uncertainty to just straight wanting to kill someone. And the emotions that come out of it lead to it just being so powerful.
Next in my Brand New quest came their brand new album, Daisy. Daisy is their... weirdest album. They infuse a bunch of old radio clips which is actually kind of cool. It leads to another holy shit moment though in Vices. Possibly worse than the one in Luca. Daisy is just about as pissed off as The Devil and God... though not as focused on just an ex, as far as I can tell. Daisy hasn't lasted as well as my first two Brand New experiences. About half of the songs I don't really want to hear when they come on now. I don't know if it's because of overplaying them or just not as high of quality or what. You Stole, Bed and At the Bottom are the main examples. You Stole is pretty much six minutes of those two words being repeated.
My favorite songs from this album are Bought a Bride, Sink and In a Jar. I think it's just the shifts from relative calm to screaming that makes me like them. This album is so much more dark and doesn't have the clever lyrics I look for and have relished in their last albums. But the musicianship is really good as always and it's a nice departure from what they've done in the past. A lot different.
So for some reason I waited another six months before buying Brand New's first album Your Favorite Weapon. And going back to this album after hearing their others, it's amazing how much they've evolved since then. YFW was a really good album but it was still just a pop-punk album. When I only hear the intro to, say, Jude Law and a Summer Abroad, I think it's a blink-182 song. This isn't bad but any means but if you played me Failure by Design and then played me At the Bottom back to back I would have no idea they were by the same band.
The more I listen to this album, the more I like it. It's really fun, even though they're still angry emo kids at this point. One of the songs, Seventy Time 7, is basically calling out the lead singer of Taking Back Sunday and saying they hope he dies on his way home from a party, though not as literally as it sounds. In what's probably my favorite song on the album, Mixtape, the band even self-references, which I always like in a song for some reason:
I just love how the song is lyrically even if it's pretty immature. He's clearly telling a girl to get out of his life and calling her fake but it's not as depressingly heavy as the last two albums and comes off as playful. I wouldn't say that musically YFW is up to the standard of the last three albums but that's to be expected and it's not like it's bad. It's just more generic.
I guess the biggest thing I like about Brand New is that all four of their albums sounds different. With many of the bands that started around the same time as them, their sound hasn't changed very much since then. But each of Brand New's four albums are distinct. If you play a song I can identify which album it's from immediately, which I might not be able to do with a band like the Foo Fighters or something. YFW is like someone dealing with their first break up, Deja Entendu is the growth past that. The Devil and God are dealing with a bad end to a serious relationship and Daisy is the aftermath of that and growing cynicism.
So that's Brand New. A very amateurish review of their career thus far. If you haven't heard much of them, I hope this leads you to check them out. You can see whether I'm way off with my ideas about what their songs and albums are about or even about how good they are. But that's what music is, ultimately. Subjective.
The very first Brand New song I heard was probably Sowing Season or Jesus Christ. Sowing Season probably just in passing because it was one of their more popular songs. Jesus Christ was the first one I downloaded, at the recommendation of one Nathan Smith. It is a wonderful song, though wonderful is probably a strange word to describe it. I'm not very good at interpreting song lyrics and Jesse Lacey is a fantastic song writer but the song seems more or less like a simile between what the singer is going through and the crucifixion of Jesus. There might be more or fewer religious overtones than I see but I mainly see the religious part as a metaphor for what he's going through.
So anyway, that was my first exposure to the band, towards the end of my senior year of high school. Three years after The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me was released and three months before their newest album, Daisy, was released. Most of my favorite bands have come from me getting in to their music long after its been released. I'm like the anti-hipster in that sense. "I discovered this after anyone was still listening to it". So, yeah, I can't say I wss their first big fan or anything.
I had Jesus Christ for about a month before I downloaded Deja Entendu. I don't know why I waited so long. Probably just dealing with all the shit that goes on in the last month of senior year. (Note that I looked up the dates I added these songs in my iTunes library and that I don't have a freakish memory for this.) Anyway, possibly as a result, Deja Entendu is probably my favorite album of theirs.
I wish I could explain why. I guess because it's still a degree of pissed off but not as high-school-feeling as Your Favorite Weapon, their first album, but also not as heavy and dark as The Devil and God... or Daisy. One of my favorite Brand New songs is "Okay I Believe You, but My Tommy Gun Don't". First because what an awesome title. Second, it's a ridiculously fun and funny song. Jesse Lacey is pretty clearly poking fun at everyone in music who're so full of themselves. My favorite line is probably "My tongue's the only muscle in my body that works harder than my heart" just because of how ridiculously over the top it is with how sincere and great of a writer/singer he is.
Deja Entendu is just great to listen to all the way through. This is where my lack of ability to talk about why I like music comes in but pretty much every element of it is great in my eyes. I guess I'm a sucker for overdubbing and harmonies (I guess you can call them that). The type of screaming, again I'm not sure if you can call it that, on this album is the kind that I actually like. Lacey has a ton of vocal range. If I had to pick a few songs for you to listen to from the album besides the one I already names, I'd go with "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows", "Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades" and "Good to Know That if I Ever Need Attention All I Have to Do is Die". Hooray long titles.
So after a month of Deja Entendu, I bought The Devil and God... It's a very different album than Deja Entendu, much darker, much heavier. I am, again, terrible at interpreting meaning but pretty much all the songs are about shitty things happening and how they are dealt with. I am oversimplifying a lot. One of the things I like most about this album is how jarring some of the songs are. I'd explain it but here's an example of what I'm talking about.
It's amazing how the song goes from a relatively soft song to Lacey just screaming his lungs out. Whenever I listen to this song now, I'm waiting for that moment in the song because it's the best part. It's a dark song but there are times where you want someone out of your life that badly. But just the juxtaposition of that relative calm with the rawness that comes out of it is something I'm a sucker for. That kind of thing is a trademark of this album. I love a song that can scare the shit out of me like that.
This album is ridiculously good beyond that one song. It's obviously depressing, given the title. The character singing (I guess that's how I've always seen it) is going through varying stages of shit, from depressing to pining for lost opportunities to uncertainty to just straight wanting to kill someone. And the emotions that come out of it lead to it just being so powerful.
Next in my Brand New quest came their brand new album, Daisy. Daisy is their... weirdest album. They infuse a bunch of old radio clips which is actually kind of cool. It leads to another holy shit moment though in Vices. Possibly worse than the one in Luca. Daisy is just about as pissed off as The Devil and God... though not as focused on just an ex, as far as I can tell. Daisy hasn't lasted as well as my first two Brand New experiences. About half of the songs I don't really want to hear when they come on now. I don't know if it's because of overplaying them or just not as high of quality or what. You Stole, Bed and At the Bottom are the main examples. You Stole is pretty much six minutes of those two words being repeated.
My favorite songs from this album are Bought a Bride, Sink and In a Jar. I think it's just the shifts from relative calm to screaming that makes me like them. This album is so much more dark and doesn't have the clever lyrics I look for and have relished in their last albums. But the musicianship is really good as always and it's a nice departure from what they've done in the past. A lot different.
So for some reason I waited another six months before buying Brand New's first album Your Favorite Weapon. And going back to this album after hearing their others, it's amazing how much they've evolved since then. YFW was a really good album but it was still just a pop-punk album. When I only hear the intro to, say, Jude Law and a Summer Abroad, I think it's a blink-182 song. This isn't bad but any means but if you played me Failure by Design and then played me At the Bottom back to back I would have no idea they were by the same band.
The more I listen to this album, the more I like it. It's really fun, even though they're still angry emo kids at this point. One of the songs, Seventy Time 7, is basically calling out the lead singer of Taking Back Sunday and saying they hope he dies on his way home from a party, though not as literally as it sounds. In what's probably my favorite song on the album, Mixtape, the band even self-references, which I always like in a song for some reason:
I just love how the song is lyrically even if it's pretty immature. He's clearly telling a girl to get out of his life and calling her fake but it's not as depressingly heavy as the last two albums and comes off as playful. I wouldn't say that musically YFW is up to the standard of the last three albums but that's to be expected and it's not like it's bad. It's just more generic.
I guess the biggest thing I like about Brand New is that all four of their albums sounds different. With many of the bands that started around the same time as them, their sound hasn't changed very much since then. But each of Brand New's four albums are distinct. If you play a song I can identify which album it's from immediately, which I might not be able to do with a band like the Foo Fighters or something. YFW is like someone dealing with their first break up, Deja Entendu is the growth past that. The Devil and God are dealing with a bad end to a serious relationship and Daisy is the aftermath of that and growing cynicism.
So that's Brand New. A very amateurish review of their career thus far. If you haven't heard much of them, I hope this leads you to check them out. You can see whether I'm way off with my ideas about what their songs and albums are about or even about how good they are. But that's what music is, ultimately. Subjective.
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