Brand New @ EagleBank Arena – November 10th 2016

Brand New released their fourth studio album, Daisy, in 2009, and the follow-up has been a long time coming. The release of two new singles – “Mene” last year and “I Am a Nightmare” this year – seemed to signal a resurgence in activity for the Long Island-based indie rockers, but the band confirmed in September that a new album wouldn’t come out this year as they are still working on it. Instead, the band would go on a ten-year anniversary tour of their third release, 2006’s The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. In mid-October, the band embarked on a 22-date US tour, including a stop at the EagleBank Arena on the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.

While there may be some wait yet for new songs, fans still packed the arena for the opportunity to hear old favorites. The band started the show off playing “Mix Tape” from their 2001 debut Your Favorite Weapon. They then played about half of their second album, 2003’s Deja Entendu, including “Sic Transit Gloria… Glory Fades,” “I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light,” “The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot,” and “Okay I Believe You, but My Tommy Gun Don’t.” Although the band didn’t play any new material of their own, they did include one recent cover, of Julien Baker’s “Sprained Ankle,” before one more from Deja Entendu, “Play Crack the Sky.”

From there, the band launched into the centrepiece of the set, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me played in full. The band played through the album mostly in order, but several of the songs got expanded and modified in their live versions, including some lyrics from “Monster Mash” thrown in during “Degausser” and another Deja Entendu track, “Tautou,” appended onto “You Won’t Know.” Songs that the band has only played sporadically since the album’s release, including “Welcome To Bangkok” and “Not the Sun” made appearances, alongside some of their best-known tracks such as “Jesus.” The band diverged from the album’s running order only by moving the untitled instrumental tenth track to the end of the set, where it got extended significantly and made much louder, while singer Jesse Lacey introduced the band.

While fans may mourn the continued wait for new material, the look backwards for this tour showed a band still at the top of their game and served to build anticipation for what is still to come.

The show was opened by The Front Bottoms, whose most recent released Back On Top came out last year, and Modern Baseball, who released Holy Ghost this year.

Associated dates: