walking upstream…
Brand New
photo: will bonniker · cc by 4.0 ↗Brand New
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Brand New formed on Long Island in 2000, when singer Jesse Lacey left his post as Taking Back Sunday's founding bassist and joined guitarist Vincent Accardi, bassist Garrett Tierney, and drummer Brian Lane. Four albums followed, and each discarded the last: the pop-punk snap of "Your Favorite Weapon" (2001) gave way to the more ambitious "Deja Entendu" (2003), then the atmospheric, guitar-layered "The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me" (2006), then the raw, distorted "Daisy" (2009). "It's strange to look at it this way," Lacey told Drowned in Sound in 2007, "but our band is a musical documentation of us growing up." That restlessness had specific, named sources — a Manchester singer, a Seattle chorus pedal, a Chicago bass tone — each absorbed whole and rebuilt into a record that sounded like nobody else's.
the sound in question
2006
Jesus ChristBrand New
walk the tributaries ↓
Morrissey1980s · Alternative rock / Indie rock
"Morrissey, The Smiths, and The Beatles are favourites of ours," Lacey told the BBC in 2007, tracing his record collection back to Manchester. The devotion predates that interview: on Brand New's 2001 debut, "Mix Tape" needles an ex for mocking "the Smiths and Morrissey"; two years later, performing "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows" on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Lacey taped "Hi Moz" across his guitar, and Alternative Press later reported he'd covered Morrissey's 1994 track "Why Don't You Find Out for Yourself." Three separate gestures, one name repeating.
listen: upstream & here
1988
SuedeheadMorrissey
2001
Mix TapeBrand New
listen forPlay Morrissey's "Suedehead" first — the chiming, major-key guitar figure under his droll, aching vocal is the sound Lacey grew up worshipping. "Mix Tape" borrows that same jangly brightness for its verses, but the giveaway is the lyric itself: listen for Lacey singing the words "the Smiths and Morrissey" outright, mid-song, naming his source instead of hiding it. It's the rare case where the influence isn't just audible — it's spoken.
Nirvana1990s · Grunge / Alternative rock
Lacey named the specific record behind Brand New's heavier turn after "Your Favorite Weapon": Nirvana's "Come As You Are." Its guitar chorus, he told CHARTattack in 2009, "is actually a very extreme chorus. It's very wobbly and under-watery. And when I listened to it as a kid I thought, 'Oh, that's a great sound.'" Brand New chased that same oversaturated, watery pedal tone once they started tracking "The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me" — a debt Pitchfork later confirmed unprompted, writing that the album "touches on Nirvana."
listen: upstream & here
1991
Come As You AreNirvana
2006
Jesus ChristBrand New
listen forCue Nirvana's "Come As You Are" and isolate the guitar under the vocal in the chorus — that queasy, chorus-pedal wobble is the effect Lacey chased for years. "Jesus Christ," the most chorus-heavy single from "The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me," runs the same trick at album scale: clean guitars set to a slow, underwater vibrato, doubled and layered until the whole song seems to ripple. Where Nirvana used the effect for one hook, Brand New builds an entire ballad's atmosphere out of it.
The Jesus Lizard1990s · Noise rock / Post-hardcore
"Some of the bass sounds we just took directly from Jesus Lizard and Husker Du records," Lacey told CHARTattack in 2009, naming another band absorbed the same way. "You hear the strings rattling so much. We just kind of fell in love with that sound." The theft went beyond audio: the sleeve for the "Jesus Christ" single is, per Pitchfork, "a blatant homage" to the Jesus Lizard's 1991 album cover for "Goat" — a visual credit nobody in the press noticed at the time.
listen: upstream & here
1991
2009
VicesBrand New
listen forPlay the Jesus Lizard's "Nub" and listen to the bass: it doesn't just hold down the low end, it rattles and buzzes against the strings almost like a second guitar. "Vices," from the noisier "Daisy," goes after that same distorted, string-rattling tone under a full-throttle band — the exact sonic signature Lacey described chasing on record. It's the sound of an intentional theft, not an accident.