Brandnew
Your Favortie Weapon
Triple Crown
Hip, contemporary subjects (Jude Law, Amaretto, eyeliner, and mixtapes) with light, but not shallow background music. The writing is conversational, like most punk, and while Brandnew isn’t exactly The Clash, they have that teenage, Blink-182 sound (done better than the real thing) with biting lyrics (“And even if her plane crashed tonight she’ll find some way to disappoint me/by not burning in the wreckage” from “Jude Law and a Semester Abroad”) and cool, fresh references. This is the stuff soundtracks are made of. Perfect for dorm parties and the best thing to bring to any dull gathering. The first time you hear Your Favorite Weapon, you’ll swear you’ve been listening to it forever. A few of the best tracks are “The Shower Scene,” “Sudden Death in Carolina,” “Failure By Design,” the painfully wonderful “No Seatbelt Song” (“I shot the pilot/now I’m begging you to fly this for me/I’m here for you to use/broken and bruised/It’s only you/ Beautiful”) and the well written and meaningful “Soco Amaretto Lime” (“The fuel lights been on for days/but that doesn’t mean anything…/I’m gonna stay 18 forever”), which brings the whole idea of the album to a close: the youth we can’t have forever but try to retain anyway. All in all, Your Favorite Weapon is about the fleeting days of the last summer before you go off to college, done so much better than the other overly commercialized, overly TRL-ed groups that have gone there in the recent past. Any young, involved person is going to blow up over Brandnew. If you’re older and into teenage, contemporary punk, don’t breeze by this, either. While it is age directed (“You’re just jealous ‘cause we’re young and in love”), it isn’t done so overbearingly that it would hinder you from enjoying it still.
Triple Crown Records: http://www.triplecrownrecords.com
