Joel Faurote shot some photographs for us of Brand New and Nada Surf during their show at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, MI a few nights ago. You’ll find the galleries below.
Brand New at the Fox Theatre in Detroit
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News From Brand New’s Chicago Show
Brand New performed in Chicago last night which means we have some new goodies. First, you can see what the tour vinyl offered looks like, you can watch the set on YouTube, and we learned that “Same Logic/Teeth” was actually written by Vinnie over a decade ago. So, that’s cool.
The band also mentioned they’ll be coming back to Chicago “within the next 14 months.” Oh, and they have new merch up on their website.
Instrumental Brand New Medley
Summer Swee-Singh has arranged and performed an instrumental Brand New medley of “451” and “Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis.”
This is pretty awesome.
Brand New Open Tour in Detroit
Brand New began their new tour last night. You can find the setlist below. They will be selling Science Fiction on vinyl (black variant) at all upcoming shows and if you pre-ordered your copy it should be in your mailbox very soon.
Brand New Orders Shipping “Soon”
Forum Members Compilation: Brand New Covers
Our music forum has put together a cover compilation of Brand New songs. You can stream that below.
The Data and God Are Raging Inside Me
Gwilym Lockwood has attempted to look at the Spotify data and map out Brand New’s music over the years:
My clustering algorithm identified three main types of Brand New songs:
1: “Hard and upbeat” (Loud, high energy, more dancey, higher valence)
2: “Soft and quiet” (Acoustic, low energy, quiet)
3: “Hard and intense” (Loud, high energy, less dancey, lower valence)Your Favorite Weapon has a lot of type 1 songs (e.g. Seventy Times 7), while Devil and God has a lot of type 3 songs (e.g. You Won’t Know). Science Fiction has an even spread of all three. Hover over the points for more information, and click the cluster guide or the points to highlight the data across the graphs.
There’s some pretty interesting stuff to play around with here.
Nada Surf Opening for Brand New
Kevin Devine Joins Brand New as Touring Member
Kevin Devine has announced he’s going to be a touring member of Brand New for the foreseeable future:
So, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be touring as a member of Brand New, playing guitar & singing harmonies. I’ve been playing music with & around Brand New in various ways for basically our entire careers; I love & am proud of them, think they’ve made a(nother) dynamic, special record, and take seriously the opportunity to perform as a part of their band, to help execute their vision & hopefully augment their already plenty-formidable stature. (It’s also really fun.) The reason for saying anything in public is to share that I’ll be quieting down the KD world for a while. There will still be a handful of odd shows here & there, and a few non-tour- or proper-record-related projects, but it feels good to do something else, take stock & decide what comes next, and “go away” a bit in some core sense. That’s it.
Thanks as always & be good to each other – these are scary, brutal, psychedelic times, but you’re not alone.
Brand New Set at High & Low Fest
Brand New performed at High & Low Fest last night. A bunch of fans stayed up and watched fan shot live streams while chatting in the forum last night. You can find the full setlist below, re-read the fan reaction in the forum, and download the set via Brand New Archive.
If that’s a variation of the “goodbye” set, holy hell, it’s just about perfect. Also, pretty cool to see Kevin Devine up there on stage playing with the band. He harmonizes perfectly.
Geoff Rickly of Thursday Talks About ‘Science Fiction’
Geoff Rickly of Thursday is the latest guest on the Vinyl Me, Please podcast. He discusses his thoughts on Brand New’s new album Science Fiction.
Read More “Geoff Rickly of Thursday Talks About ‘Science Fiction’”
Brand New Top the Charts
It’s official: Brand New have the number one album in the country.
Rock band Brand New nabs its first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart as Science Fiction starts atop the tally with 58,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Aug. 24, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 55,000 were in traditional album sales. The set was released Aug. 18 through the band’s own Procrastinate! Music Traitors label, and is the first album from the band in nearly eight years.
What an absolute delight to see. I told the story on the last podcast about when I first started writing about this band and I truly never thought I’d see them top the charts like this. Incredible. Congratulations to the band and their team. If this ends up being their last album, the years of building a hyper-dedicated fanbase and releasing fantastic music pays off with this special honor.
Science Fiction (Encore Episode 152)
You may have had to wait a few extra weeks for a new episode of Encore, but that doesn’t come close to the eight year wait for a new album from Brand New. But, it’s here, and we’re gonna talk all about it. I am joined this week, once again, by special guest Drew Beringer to break down Science Fiction. We talk about our history with the band, our thoughts on their catalog, and do a track-by-track through the new album. We discuss the band’s place in the music scene, why they resonate so much with fans, and argue how the new album stacks up in their discography.
There’s never been a band quite like Brand New, and we may never see anything quite like them, or their rabid fanbase, again. I hope you enjoy our deep dive as much as we did recording it.
The Apocalyptic World of Brand New’s ‘Science Fiction’ Feels Realer Than Ever
I really liked this review of Brand New’s Science Fiction by Craig Jenkins, published at Vulture:
In any other year — hell, any other month this year — Science Fiction’s gallery of druggies, atom bombs, and separatist militiamen would’ve read like, well, real-deal science fiction. But summer 2017 is a place where guys with guns tout full-fledged white supremacy, and the guy with the nuclear codes promise “fire and fury” to overseas enemies. The protagonist of Brand New’s “Desert,” a gun-toting, homophobic wing nut who thinks God commanded him to wipe out liberals, isn’t a far cry from the people on TV rallying in support of ethnic cleansing. The nuclear winter of “137,” a song literally named after a byproduct of decaying radioactive uranium, suddenly seems possible.
Review: Brand New – Science Fiction
If asked to condense Brand New’s career into one word, that word would be “reactive.” From the title of their second album, Deja Entendu, translating to “already heard” to the abrasive, pedal-infused guitars that dominate their fourth album, Daisy, Brand New have always been a band known to react to critics, fans, and perhaps most importantly, themselves.
For many readers of AbsolutePunk.net (R.I.P.) and now this site, August 17th was a day eight years in the making. It started in typical Brand New fashion with fans receiving cryptic packages in the mail, sparking internet confusion and excitement. This time, however, that package contained the band’s fifth (and presumably final) album, Science Fiction – a fitting goodbye to fans who waited just as long for lyric booklets, let alone a new album. After all, frontman Jesse Lacey has been uncommonly direct about the band’s whereabouts this past year, announcing things like, “We’re done,” at shows, selling shirts predicting the band’s end (2000 – 2018) and even ribbing the band’s bad habits on standalone single “I Am a Nightmare” (“I’m not a prophecy come true/I’ve just been goddamn mean to you”).