Deranged Thoughts With Amber And Sara: Brand New

I was musing via text message, as I so often do, to fellow RFC-er Sara Jacobsen about such "deep subject matter" as Insane Clown Posse and the fact that Faygo is a legitimate beverage in Michigan, where I hail from, when I realized that Sara an I were sitting on a goldmine. We, you see, are two hilarious motherfuckers, for lack of better terminology. What, we respectively wondered, would happen if you got "two hilarious motherfuckers" with many interests in common together and had them co-write an article? Thus, Deranged Thoughts With Amber and Sara was born, an every-now-and-then article that, well, is basically just a couple of girls trying desperately to talk about music and failing to stay on topic miserably. For our first Deranged Thoughts With Amber and Sara column, we decided to talk about - or try to talk about, rather - a band we both have an immense amount of respect for, Brand New. They just so happen to be a band that I, Amber Valentine, wrote a pretty kick ass editorial about for Indie College that you should probably read instead of this because... Well... What you are about to read... Well, there's nothing I can say to make anyone feel better about anything that's about to transpire. But stick with us. It might get better. But, much like that time Mark told me "not to get too drunk", I make no promises.

Deranged Thoughts With Amber and Sara

Brand New Edition

Amber: I know it's, quite simply, over dramatic but honestly, every time I experience heartbreak, all I want to do is hole myself up in my room with a fifth of Jameson and Brand New's The Devil and God Are Raging Inside of Me. Agree or disagree?

Sara: Well, of course I agree with you. The Devil and God is by far Brand New's best album; however, if we're talking booze, (which is in my top 3 favorite things right next to bitches and kittens) I'm going to have to go with a bottle of Jack. Normally, I'd say SoCo, but I drank too much of that my freshman year in college and now it makes me sick.

I feel like everyone overdoes the SoCo early on in life. I've had my fill of SoCo and plus, if you order it at the bar, you look like a pussy. That's just a fact. Jack makes you look bad ass, so congratulations on that. Jameson, I feel, makes you look classy. At least I think so. So god only knows why I'm ordering it. I really ought to change things up and start ordering Canadian Club to match my real life class level. Hey, remember when you said "If you look up classy in the dictionary, there's probably pictures of you in varying states of sobriety making out with strangers in corn fields and rat infested back alleys"?

I do remember that! Remember that time we went and saw Kevin Devine and I made you order me a Jack and coke? That was a swell time. On a different note, the beverage I just ordered at Denny's tasted like straight whiskey.

DENNY'S SERVES WHISKEY NOW?!

I have no idea! It was some bright blue beverage! It was beautiful and tasted like heaven! (Heaven tastes like whiskey, obviously). It was actually awful... Not even gonna lie.

Well, bright blue tends to not equal greatness, so far as beverages are concerned. I mean, unless we're talking blue raspberry kool-aid and possibly Bombay Sapphire. I mean, I'm not a gin fan but so far as gin's go, that's the way to do it.

You can never go wrong with kool-aid. It's one of very few drinks I can think of where the color and the flavor are one and the same! I like that in a beverage!

Once, I interviewed Miniature Tigers. Remember, it was before the DeKalb show we went to? Well, at one point, Charles Brand apologized to me for having to interview them because he knew at the time that I was going to have to wade through an hour plus of bullshit transcription to get an even halfway cohesive interview out of that clusterfuck. I feel like that's what's happening here. Weren't we supposed to talk about Brand New or something?

Brand New - Millstone

I think you may be onto something here, Amber. Brand New, sweet band, right? I'll pretty much always say that Jesse Lacey is a lyrical genius.

Let's just not mention "down like a clown in the second round" and I'm totally on board with the phrase "lyrical genius" being tossed around. I mean, "You Won't Know" has comforted me during many a self-important mope. So over dramatic! So good!

Ah yes, "down like a clown". Awful. Wasn't that written by Vin though? Regardless, Daisy is definitely my least favorite Brand New album. I don't actually understand how they could give us Deja Entendu and The Devil and God and then expect that Daisy even kind of lives up to them?! No, sir.

I'm pretty sure that's one of the two or three songs Jesse did write on Daisy. But I mean, I didn't get a physical copy so don't look at me. Digital stuff rarely has all the credits which, honestly, is a big "boner-b-gone" so far as I'm concerned. I like to know, especially in a case like Daisy, who wrote the songs and when guest performers come into play. But regardless of who wrote it, Daisy just made me feel like I was getting fucked in the ear... In a bad way. A lubeless way.

I don't know if I'd go that far. Daisy had it's moments. Very few of them, but there were definitely some. In completely unrelated news, I'm a little buzzed, so typing this message right now is extremely difficult. Thank god iPhone has auto correct.

Sorry, I didn't read that because I was on a conference call with our respective shreds of journalistic integrity.

Integrity? I'm not sure I understand. What does that even mean?

A quick googling lead me to this picture of a lion and some text that's too small to read so I can only assume Integrity was the name of the Jesus Lion in The Chronicles of Narnia.