Brand New - Your Favorite Weapon

The B Side makes every attempt to be a 'blog for the people, by the people'. And followers janis! and Shaqwanda have been obsessed with me reviewing Brand New for quite a while now. Shaqwanda specifically asked for me to hear this record, while janis! asked that I look at 'Deja Entendu' but followed that up by saying, "any of their stuff really". So here I am - getting to Brand New. The samples will show up a little different...you'll have to open up a page and click 'Play All' and then you'll have the same functionality as the other ones. Okay - so these guys better be amazing. For all they hype I've now built up in my own head. These gents are a New York based band, that formed around 2000. In the 90's, half of Brand New was part of a different band called The Rookie Lot. They decided to split from the dead weight and form Brand New. This was their first album, coming out in October of 2001. It hasn't sold a TON of albums, but it was recognized enough to help them seal a new record deal with Interscope. We all know my opinion of punk/indie/emo rock. It all sounds very similar to me. These guys don't buck that trend. I could honestly not really distinguish them from Taking Back Sunday or something of that ilk. Most of that is probably just my ignorance of the genre though. Listening to this a couple times, it seems to be mostly about break ups? Like a teenage angst record about that hard high school heartbreak? I don't know - I'm just picking that up in some of the lyrics. By no means is this bad, or not easy to listen to. It just doesn't blow my mind. I wouldn't turn it off, but I wouldn't buy it. Which to me, means an average album. I'll listen to their second release sometime too...see if that tickles my fancy.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Shower Scene, The
2. Jude Law and a Semester Abroad
3. Sudden Death in Carolina
4. Mix Tape
5. Failure by Design
6. Last Chance to Lose Your Keys
7. Logan to Government Center
8. No Seatbelt Song, The
9. Seventy Times 7
10. Secondary
11. Magazines
12. Soco Amaretto Lime

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. Soco Amaretto Lime
2. The No Seatbelt Song
3. Jude Law And A Semester Abroad

FINAL RATING:
3 out of 5 stars