Brand New
Brand New formed on Long Island, New York, in 2000 around singer-guitarist Jesse Lacey, beginning as a pop-punk and emo act before steadily absorbing indie and alternative rock. The 2003 album 'Deja Entendu' and the darker, more expansive 2006 record 'The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me' recast the band as ambitious, texturally adventurous songwriters, drawing comparisons to acts like Radiohead. Their diaristic lyrics and dynamic, quiet-to-loud arrangements made them one of the most influential bands of 2000s emo.
By the band's own account and in critics' framing, Jesse Lacey drew heavily on Radiohead as Brand New moved past straightforward emo — the group set out to fold Radiohead-style atmosphere into their records, and by their third album writers were calling them an American answer to Radiohead.
listen forCue Radiohead's 'Paranoid Android' then Brand New's 'Sowing Season (Yeah)' — both lull you with a restrained, unsettled verse before detonating into a wall of distorted guitar, treating dynamics and dread as the main event.
Lacey has said he was particularly influenced by U2 while making Brand New's later material, and you can hear it in the shift toward wide, ringing guitar textures and slow-building, emotionally swelling arrangements over the band's earlier punk snap.
listen forCompare U2's 'With or Without You' to Brand New's 'Limousine' — both stretch out over a patient, repeating chord bed and let a single ringing guitar figure and a rising vocal carry the song to an aching climax.
R.E.M. is among the acts Lacey has covered live, and their model of literate, melodic American guitar-rock — jangling, understated, and lyric-forward — sits behind Brand New's more tuneful, hook-driven moments.
listen forPlay R.E.M.'s 'Losing My Religion' next to Brand New's 'The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot' — listen for the same bright, interlocking guitar arpeggios and a melancholy melody that keeps circling rather than resolving.