Earlier this year, we were treated with the incredible news that Brand New would be hitting the studio in April for the 2012 follow-up to their last album, Daisy. However, word has come back that after booking a months worth of studio time, the band has nothing to show for it and are, in fact, totally unsure as to when they will have something, anything, to offer fans.
But don’t panic, frontman Jesse Lacey has assured us in a recent interview that despite the lack of new material, “Brand New is always going to be Brand New — I don’t think we’re ever going to say, ‘Hey, we’re never going to record a record again'”. He continues to say: “…at the same time, there were things in the course of the band that we weren’t looking ahead to what the next record was going to be.”
Over the years the band has built a cult following, with no two albums the same, from the pop punk-themed Your Favourite Weapon to the acoustic more mellow Deja Entendu, and the releases The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me and Daisy verging on shoe gaze, ‘indiecore’. The past 12 months has seen members of the band participate in peripheral side projects, though April was set for Brand New to complete an album they have been working on since 2009.
“You start to lose that whole idea that it’s important for your band to be known as this entity, and we put a lot more importance on our individual fulfillment, really”, Lacey commented. The members had in fact used the booked studio time, though rarely as a whole band. “In some ways a band can be limiting, especially after being in it for 10 to 12 years. It really has become a lot more about the friendship and the families we have with each other — and the idea that we can’t do this much longer”, Lacey stated.
Dark days indeed for Brand New fans who have grown accustomed to regular releases. We can only hope that this is just a creative dry spell and the lads will get back to it soon.
