Brand New: Deja Entendu (2LP) [TRIPLE CROWN]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set from Triple Crown spreads the album across four sides in a gatefold jacket. It was the band's first album to chart in the US and went gold, and both singles reached the UK top 40.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Jesse Lacey named the album with a shrug. Deja Entendu is French for already heard, his tongue-in-cheek nod to the idea that nobody makes a record without someone calling it derivative. In fact Brand New had travelled a long way from the pop-punk of Your Favorite Weapon, with Lacey writing on acoustic guitar in his bedroom during two years of touring and listening to Sigur Rós, Mogwai and The Smiths.

Producer Steven Haigler gave the band room to stretch, so "Tautou" drifts in like the opening of a film, "Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't" swings, "Jaws Theme Swimming" and "Guernica" build and break, and "Play Crack the Sky" closes on a long, haunting acoustic note. Lacey turned the lyrics on himself, writing about the ways he'd hurt people rather than the ways they'd hurt him, and "Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis" simmers with that honesty.

Its success led straight to a deal with DreamWorks/Interscope, and the album keeps turning up on lists of the decade's best and emo's finest. Don and Ryan Clark of Demon Hunter designed the cover after a single conversation with the band, which must be some kind of record for an artwork meeting.

Also at Kops: more Brand New on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Triple Crown / Razor & Tie, a reissue of the 2003 album.