After critically acclaimed album “The Devil and God Are Raging Inside of Me”, many critics couldn’t imagine emo kings Brand New stepping any further out of their type-casted persona. If there was any doubt before, there certainly is none now: Brand New is a tour-de-force.

Don’t get it twisted – they are as emotional as ever. After all, what artist isn’t? This time, however, that emo, self-hating stereotype has manifested itself in deeper, rooted sentiments. The opening track ‘Vices’ is a perfect example. Starting off with a one-minute clip of a gospel standard, the song quickly switches to frontman Jesse Lacey’s screaming along with discordant guitars and weird time signatures. Heavy, damp guitars slish-slosh over the song and drown it in perfect chaos. Sonically, one could say Brand New is louder than ever. But then, you get tracks like ‘Bed’ and ‘Noro’, quieter tunes that highlight Jesse Lacey’s achy, almost bluesy voice. In a short way, ‘Daisy’ is mercurial and consistently inconsistent…but in a good way.

In their shortest album yet (a mere 41 minutes: 15 minutes shorter than DAGR), Brand New skips between loud, screamers (‘Vice’); slower, introspective pieces (‘Bed’, ‘You Stole’, ‘Daisy’), to blues-based, standard alternative rock (‘Gasoline’, ‘Bought a Bride’) quickly and noticeably. The effect of this is a denser, heavier feeling record than they have ever made.

Lyrically, Brand New is a slightly different band in ‘Daisy’. More than previous albums, Vin Accardi (guitarist) had a more prominent role in the lyrics. Differences can be seen, although Accardi’s words seem like something Lacey would have written. Sometimes the lyrics fall short of what could have been (‘At the Bottom’ was frustratingly uneasy). But there are definitely some gems. ‘You Stole’ is a killer; a new, mutation of the fan-beloved ‘Jesus’:

“But I just don’t care

We all go to sleep in the same place

And in the morning hope that we’re all the same

Just sit around like broke down cars in the lot Waiting for repairs”.

The beautiful, introspective moments on this album most definitely shadow those few and far between lyrical pitfalls because of the sheer density of the album.

‘Daisy’ finds Brand New the most experimental they have ever been. Jesse Lacey said in an interview with Spin Magazine, “We’ve always been interested in putting strange things on the albums. We don’t do it as much as we would like.” The start of this strange can be seen in opening track ‘Vices’, where they sample that weird gospel hymn and scream like a hard-core band; in ‘Bed’, where Vin Accardi does a blues solo (a blues solo?!), in ‘Be Gone’ with the delayed, screwed up vocals and the slide guitar that sounds a like a Beck song, in ‘Daisy’ with recorded speeches by a man and a child. Simply put, Brand New really blew the doors down on this record. They brought it from all angles.