There isn’t much to say because I took a week to make this album review. Déjà Entendu by Brand New had always been such a pivotal part of my history as a teenager growing up in the early 00s. I admit I haven’t owned a single physical copy of Déjà Entendu. I was living in Manila back in the day. I had LimeWire, and that was all I could afford. I didn’t even have an iPod. I was good at making do—burned CDs, a Walkman phone, whatever worked.
Another thing I had to piece together was the sequence of songs from Déjà Entendu. A typical emotional hardcore album, or so I thought. I think we’re calling Brand New alternative rock now, in this decade where 2020s Emos have assigned Fall Out Boy and MCR to the Emo category. I’d beg to differ. FOB and MCR will always be pop punk to me, and I love their music. But Brand New—Brand New always felt like something different, something that unraveled rather than declared itself.
It’s always easy and amazing to reference heartbreak and emotional strife when an example is given. It makes the songs immediate, vivid, pressing against the skin like something still happening.
Here are my thoughts to every song:
- Tautou
She appears, but not really. A name, a reference, a shape of a feeling. The guitar is faint, the voice is almost gone, but not quite. He says he’s sinking, and that seems true. He says he’s burning, and that’s harder to picture, but still. It feels like he’s talking to someone who’s no longer listening, or never was. The song ends before you decide whether you liked it, and somehow, that seems intentional. There are no conclusions here—only the sensation of starting, not gently, but with distance. Like trying to remember the beginning of a dream after waking. - Sic Transit Gloria… Glory Fades
He is told to die young. He does not want to. He wants to be good at this moment, and he isn’t. He thinks he’s supposed to be powerful, but he’s actually small. There is a body, but it feels like a trap. Someone else is in charge, or maybe he gave up control. The phrase “glory fades” repeats in the background, but it never helps. Every attempt to assert himself sounds like a performance. He feels exposed, but not noticed. That’s the worst part. - I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light
This is a room. He is on stage in it, but he is also hiding. There are people watching, but they don’t know what they’re seeing. Maybe he’s playing well. Maybe he’s playing badly. Maybe it doesn’t matter. He is removed from it, either way. He keeps singing even though he doesn’t feel like a person who sings anymore. He feels like a line someone else wrote. Something simple and hollow that used to mean something more. - Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t
He talks to her like he loves her, and he talks to her like he hates her. Sometimes, he does both in the same breath. There is noise, and it doesn’t settle—it accelerates. When he says something sweet, it feels dangerous. When he threatens her, it sounds like a song. There is confusion, but he doesn’t want to clarify it. He wants her to be afraid of losing him. He wants to be wanted, even if the only way to get there is to be cruel. The line between romance and revenge gets thinner the louder he sings. - The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows
This song pretends to be catchy. It has hooks and a rhythm you could move to. But the words unravel everything. He doesn’t trust her. He doesn’t trust himself. He wants to say something, but instead he offers a riddle. He’s angry, but not just at her. The anger is older than that, built from something else entirely. He keeps it quiet, like all the other things no one ever knows. Except now he’s saying them. - The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot
He knows he’s ruining it, and he doesn’t stop. He says goodbye gently, but it’s still a goodbye. He compliments her like an apology, like a final gift before he disappears. There’s no noise here, no screaming—just the sound of someone fading. He knows what she deserves, and he knows he can’t give it. He says as much, over and over. She listens, but probably already knew. This is the kind of leaving that begins long before anyone walks away. When he finally goes, it won’t be a surprise. - Jaws Theme Swimming
He talks about aging, but it doesn’t sound wise. He talks about pain, but not with dignity. The images are strange: a mother looking, a picture falling, something leaking. They don’t connect clearly, but they all suggest a kind of collapse. He’s trying to track the loss but can’t find the beginning. It might be his body, or his family, or just time itself breaking down. He’s trying to learn something from it, but keeps ending up in the same place. The guitars churn. Nothing changes. Or maybe it changes too slowly to matter. - Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis
He lies to her, and he knows it. He lies well, so well that he believes himself, until suddenly he doesn’t. Then it’s just him, alone again, wondering how far it went. She didn’t know she should leave. She believed what he said. She leaned into the lie. The song moves slowly, but not kindly. His voice never breaks. Maybe that’s what’s scariest. You expect a scream, but you get restraint. - Guernica
When he first sang it, he was just trying to hold on. Later, when you listen again, you know exactly what he meant. The loss hasn’t happened yet, but it’s coming. You can feel it behind the guitars, pressing in. He says he’ll fight, but there’s no real fight in it. It’s love, but it’s also grief. It’s trying to stay, and failing. He doesn’t scream at the world. He screams for someone specific, someone who will still be gone when the song ends. You can’t help him. That’s the point. - (Guernica – Extended: “Good to know if I ever need attention…”)
It’s a cruel line, but only because it’s true. It’s said with a bitterness that feels practiced. Not a cry for help, but an inventory of all the times help never came. The attention arrives too late. It always does. People miss what matters until it’s already missing. He doesn’t say it to provoke, not exactly. He says it to name something he’s already learned the hard way. It’s ugly, and it lingers, because it doesn’t try to sound beautiful. - Play Crack the Sky
There’s no metaphor. There’s just a ship, and it’s going down. He doesn’t try to swim, because he knows it’s too late. They’ve already taken on water, and love is not enough to keep them afloat. He says the lines plainly. He doesn’t sing them like they’re poetry—he sings them like they’re fact. It’s all over. He still wants to believe in something, but not now. Now is the drowning. The final line doesn’t just close the album. It confirms everything you were afraid was true.
Conclusion
Déjà Entendu is an album that understands longing. Not just the adolescent kind, the sweeping heartbreaks of youth, but the more insidious, aching kind—the longing for clarity, for certainty, for things to feel like they once did, even if they never really did in the first place. Brand New does not give us resolutions. It gives us moments, fragments of memory and regret, and asks us to sit with them. The album does not end with triumph or healing. It ends with surrender, with shipwreck, with the quiet knowledge that some things sink no matter how tightly we hold on. And maybe that is why it still lingers, years later. Because some things echo.
I still do not own a physical copy of the album. I will probably do the responsible thing and buy a record later.