Live review: Brand New, O2 Academy, Newcastle
BRAND NEW ... have reinvented themselves impressively.
MUSIC is rife with bands who have made successful u-turns, but the transformation Long Island quartet Brand New have made over the past decade is spectacular by anyone’s standards.
Starting out as a fairly average pop-punk band, they’ve morphed into a magnificent alt-rock outfit, with an emotional depth that puts practically all their contemporaries to shame.
That shift was on full display at this sold-out gig, in which they spent much of their set charting it in reverse.
Kicking off with a quartet of songs from 2006’s masterpiece The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me, they certainly set the bar high, but most of the rest of their material was up to the same standard.
Cuts from breakthrough record Deja Entendu were especially well received, and even those from notably-inferior debut Your Favorite Weapon went down a storm and fitted well into the setlist.
It was when the rest of the band left frontman Jesse Lacey alone for a short solo stint that things started to go a little downhill.
There was nothing wrong with his renditions of early numbers Soca Amaretto Lime and Moshi Moshi, but they began a sequence of downbeat songs which saw the band lose a lot of the momentum they’d built up.
The slide continued with Limousine and Jesus Christ – both incredible songs, which fell victim to poor placement.
Luckily, they were able to draw upon another pair of TDAG classics, Degausser and You Won’t Know, which instantly obliterated any misgivings and ended the night in fashion.
It wasn’t a perfect performance, and was dogged by over-distorted sound throughout, but the brilliance of Brand New’s music proved more than enough to pull them through and make this a memorable night.
It might sound a little clichéd, but they are the sort of band that can change lives, and even a performance dogged by such issues did a fine job in displaying just why.
Finally, a brief but well-deserved mention for second support act I Am The Avalanche, who impressed with their visceral brand of pop-punk and gained a more favourable response than The Xcerts, who preceded them.
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Monday 21 May 2012
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