For those who want to know what the fuck is going on with Brand New right now, I’ll explain it in a way that people who are foreign to the band will understand:

Back in 2006, the band was making their third album. During the process, the low quality demos were leaked. The band decided to rehash the entire demos, leaving only 3 songs from the demo in the actual record. Two of which were acoustics that either turned electric (Untitled 08/Sowing Season) or had more electrical flourishes (Untitled 06/Luca). Both of these songs were also given completely different lyrics. The other, Untitled 09, kept only the melody of its chorus and was put into the song “The Archers’ Bows Have Broken”. These demos are a huge part of their lore for the fact that they leaked and causes the band to work on new songs which later became their opus of an album, The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me (TDAG for short). It’s the one with the spooky skeleton dudes and the little girl that you see Tumblr edits of all the time. The one with “Jesus Christ, that’s a pretty face/I’m alone again”. Yeah, that one.

When TDAG came out 9 years ago, there was a thing in the linear notes that said to send a self addressed stamped envelope and $1 to this address for a lyric booklet. No one got anything from it except some people who got their dollars returned. It has been a running joke over the years. 9 years later, someone claims to have gotten a lyric booklet from the band. He posts pictures of it and at first people think it’s a lie, but more and more people kept getting the lyric booklet in the mail.

In the lyric booklet, it came with tbe dollar that was sent and a message saying “You will get it when it’s finished”. In addition, there was also this sheet of paper that says that their leaked demos from 2006 (the low quality leaks from before, known by the fanbase as Fight Off Your Demons) are available in a cassette in high quality near the Wardenclyfe Tower. Someone went to the address but nothing was there, just a bar and a restricted private property. After a while, people made a Google search about the location and it turns out that the place used to be a radio tower. Upon furter inspection, people found cryptic information about the tower, including the fact that on July 10th, it would be the 120th birthday of the Tesla radio tower. July 10th is also the birthday of Jesse Lacey, the lead singer of Brand New. Not only that, see, June 10th is the day that record stores will stop putting out new releases on Tuesday and instead, on Friday. In addition, a couple of months ago, Mike Sapone (or Kevin Devine, I forgot which exactly) posted a picture on Instagram of the band in the studio that was captioned with the birthdays of famous celebrities. So this thing about Jesse’s birthday isn’t without reason.

Later in the night, connections were made. Last year, the band had a “NODE” button on their site that lead to a couple of places, most notably, their mp3s and a link to a page on a site called “Fusion Anomaly” that covered conspiracy theories about radio towers and the Central Nervous System. The radio tower could be a connection to the Telsa one, but what about the CNS? Another thing the band did last year was put out a new brand of merch, Electricity Is Dangerous, which shows people getting into accidents from electricity and a red line that shows exactly how they got electricuted that happens to flow through the nervous system of the characters. Currently, at the bottom of the band’s site, you can find a text that says Earth Sound Alliance 2015. On Fusion Anomaly, you can find a page called The Sounds Of Earth that talks about a project in 1977 where NASA made a time capsule that contained a vinyl like disc that held audio of many Earth-like sounds so that aliens could learn about us should they find it. It contained things from the sound of rain, barking of dogs and kisses from Mothers.

About an hour after that discovery, another person was found with a lyric booklet. On one of her pictures, it revealed an image of lights torwards the sky, much like image of The Battle Of Los Angeles, another thing that Fusion Anomaly covers. On this image there’s text that says:

218114414523

rip 2018

“Know God’s Just Work”

People assumed that this was stating the year that Brand New would break up. But what about the numbers? Questioning them, people thought they were a phone number, but it wasn’t long until the number was decoded to be:

2 18 1 14 4 14 5 23

If you assign each letter a number, A = 1, B = 2, etc., you get B R A N D N E W. Brand New. This further fuels the theory of the band’s departure. In addition, Jesse himself has said the he doesn’t want to be in the band when he’s 40. Jesse turns 40 on 2018. In addition to this, Know God’s Just Work was also on a billboard in Brooklyn last year, that also caused cryptic hype.

What exactly is Brand New hyping? Is it the break up that will be done in 3 years? Is it a new album that will be out in June? The band has been in the studio on and off for 2 years now, so that isn’t a stretch. What further helps this theory is that the band says that they want the next album they make to be what would’ve happened if TDAG (and the album after it, Daisy) never existed. Thus, it would sound like a follow up to Deja Entendu, their second record, as opposed to Daisy, their fourth.

Want one last haunting thing? A video was found yesterday that was recorded back in the day. It’s the band playing live and during the middle of the set, someone asks about the lyric booklets that were never sent. Jesse says that they would send them out during a time that everyone has forgotten about them and no one cares. The last part referencing that a lot of people don’t have the same address as they did 10 years ago, so the people who get the booklets wouldn’t care as they have no idea what it is.

Could this all be nonsense speculation? Probably, but the band is known for being cryptic. It’s all part of the band’s lore. This is how the band acts, if at all. The band loves to be silent on social media and doesn’t even go to interviews or do press. Their last music video was back in 2003. Their last album was in 2009. The band has many cryptic gems in their discography, whether it be the first time the Deja Entendu astronaut surfaced the internet in 2003 to the fact that their 2009 album, Daisy, starts and ends with a woman singing gospel for about a minute. The band has 10 untitled songs, one of which is an interlude that repeats a single phrase over and over again (some say it’s “I will never listen”, but without the lyric booklet, no one knows for sure as it has vocal effects). They have another interlude called “Be Gone” that has Jesse talking over heavily distorted vocal effects, making interpretations of the lyrics impossible bar a few words. Another song, Limousine, is a 7 minute song about the car crash that killed the 7 year old Katie Flynn. As you can see, Brand New love to be obscure, so this whole series of events can be speculated without being far fetched. This band creates mass hysteria every time the mere thought of them doing something is brought up, to an extent not even close to being matched by any band in this general music scene. Music forums have crashed due to the influx of people trying to talk about this. So, that leads to the question that I tried to answer but basically failed at doing:

What the fuck is Brand New is up to this time?

EDIT: The contents of the cassette were never mentioned and I confused it with speculation. Thus, the cassette may not be the FOYD tracks. My apologies.

Post Info

Posted on Saturday 4 April 2015.

5 years ago.

Notes: 3988