with the ninth pick in the nineteenth round of the 2013 Desert Island Music Draft, i select...
Brand New - Daisy (09/22/09):
01 Vices
02 Bed
03 At the Bottom
04 Gasoline
05 You Stole
06 Be Gone
07 Sink
08 Bought a Bride
09 Daisy
10 In a Jar
11 Noro
Genre: alternative rock, post-hardcore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_(Brand_New_album)
i'd been waiting for a band to truly inherit and inhabit the sound of Nirvana for a lotta years. the post-Nirvana rock music landscape of the mid-to-late 90's was rife with the kind of adult-alternative and power-pop sheen that hardwired sparkly, radio-ready choruses into the ears of the listener. it was all so inoffensive and sterile. nobody really took up the dirty, gritty, distortion-filled grunge and sludge that Nirvana left behind. that sound was effectively cleaned-up and streamlined by the major label system, so it was a rather shocking development for me in that waiting period to discover Brand New's The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me in 2006, over twelve years after Kurt Cobain ended the grunge movement with a shotgun shell. Devil and God may not have been an edifice constructed in honor of Nirvana, but it took its distortion-and-feedback cues and loudness dynamics straight outta Nirvana's playbook, while stripping away the vast majority of Brand New's previously clean-as-a-whistle emo-pop roots. it was among the most radical progressions i'd ever witnessed within a band's approach to making music, and Daisy, their 2009 mortar blast, is a perfection of that progression...
it is much more obviously inspired by Nirvana than Devil and God, but there are also shades of mid-90's Modest Mouse within Daisy's borders, a little Pavement, a little early Weezer, a little late-90's DC hardcore, and even a dash of turn-of-the-century post-hardcore. but Daisy always glances back at the hole Nirvana left behind with the clear intention of filling that wound. seriously, this f***er's LOUD. it's aggressive. it's abrasive. it's occasionally beautiful, but ultimately unrelenting. and, at just under 40 minutes, it's a very carefully-edited album experience. Daisy is, in my opinion, the better-late-than-never heir to what is, in my opinion, Nirvana's masterwork, the Steve Albini-produced In Utero (an equally loud, aggressive, abrasive, occasionally beautiful, but unrelenting album of about 40 minutes in length). there is a nostalgia present on Daisy, a looking back at the caustic guitar-based music of the 90's, but it also manages to sound fresh and exciting. i'd honestly pick Brand New's The Devil and God Are Raging Inside of Me as their best overall album, a "start here" for those who've never listened to them, but Daisy manages to push all of my buttons. it's a gnarled little creep of a record, and i love it...
It is a great album. But there are certainly others worthy.
