𝐃 𝐗 𝐌 𝐈 𝐍 𝐈 𝐐

Déjà Entendu by Brand New is an album meant for nostalgia and emotional complexity. It shaped my adolescence, even though I never owned a physical copy—just a collection of LimeWire downloads and a Walkman phone. The album defies easy categorization, often labeled alternative rock but carrying the weight of something more introspective, more unraveling than its pop-punk counterparts. It is an album that doesn’t ask to be understood as much as it asks to be felt.

Each track builds on themes of longing, regret, and self-destruction. Tautou is a fleeting but heavy introduction, barely there before it sinks. Sic Transit Gloria… Glory Fades moves with urgency, depicting a loss of control masked as experience. I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light and Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t shift between self-doubt and aggression, aware of the performance but unable to escape it. The album doesn’t settle; it pulls apart its own narratives as soon as they begin to form.

There is something relentless about the way these songs unfold. The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows clings to regret while disguising itself as anthemic. The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot whispers self-sabotage like a confession you’ve already heard before. Jaws Theme Swimming circles itself, never quite breaking free from the past. These songs resist catharsis; they know that pain doesn’t end just because you’ve named it.

Then, there is Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis, a song that feels like it’s watching itself in the mirror, detached but complicit. Guernica is grief made frantic, the desperate attempt to fight time. And Good to Know That If I Ever Need Attention All I Have to Do Is Die holds its bitterness like an open wound, a truth that no one wants to acknowledge but everyone understands. Each song peels back another layer, not to reveal something whole, but to show how little there is underneath.

By the time Play Crack the Sky arrives, the album is already drowning. A quiet, inevitable ending, a shipwreck that was always coming. Déjà Entendu lingers because it never really resolves. It captures the ache of wanting things to make sense, of looking for meaning in memories that are already fading. Years later, it still feels unfinished in the best way—like something waiting to be replayed, reinterpreted.

Read the full review on my website.