Ah, quiet/loud/quiet/loud. Where have we heard that before?
Brand New were an interesting band more than they were an enjoyable one. Or at least, they were after their delightfully unselfconscious debut Your Favorite Weapon. Twelve tracks of charismatic emo so strong, it felt like a capstone for the whole damn musical movement. Or maybe a gravestone is the better metaphor. Brand New had dealt a slow-bleeding but ultimately mortal wound, inflicted ironically yet surgically by a band being feted as the big (brand) new thing. So this is how emo dies; to thunderous applause.
But when you've mounted the summit of the terrain you're exploring, there's nowhere (brand) new to go, except down. Not in terms of quality; in terms of geography. Deja Entendu goes subterranean, almost daring the listener to enjoy its dark, stagnant pools and echoing darkness. "Charismatic" was now entirely off the table.
The band's masterstroke was to pair this quest for the deepest recesses of their genre and their psyches with an attempt to find a (brand) new spin on the first post-fame album. If standard emo can be summed up as "You WILL recognise my pain!", Deja Entendu explores the pain of being recognised. The fear of it is a central theme, too, whether it be at the hands of a para-social fanbase ("I Will Play My Game Beneath The Spin Light"), a burned lover ("The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot"), or your own horrified conscience (the previously-covered "Me Vs Maradona Vs Elvis").
"The Quiet Things That No-One Ever Knows" is the central chamber in the cave system Brand New carved out here, with their teeth and nails and bile. The croon/yell formula is repurposed to brilliant effect, pressed into a parallel of the calm exterior of a man desperate to tell the truth to his partner, but knowing doing so will torpedo the relationship beyond hope of it staying afloat. "I lie for you, and I lie well". He knows they're doomed - indeed, he knows sooner or later she'll figure out he's been cheating on her - but he can't bring himself to pull the trigger. Their love is dying, but he doesn't want it to die just yet. He looks out at the glory of the Pacific, and all he can think about is the hospitals. The places we delay the inevitable.
Mixed in with all this is the stress of touring - so much sacrificed for the sake of empty hotels. "If today's the day it get's tired/today's the day we drop out". Sure, mate. His partner isn't the only one he's lying to. Which of course means he's even lying about who he's lying to. Meta-mendacity.
When this song dropped as the first single from the album, there were people who complained its traditional structure - quiet/loud/quiet/loud, where have we heard that before? - was a poor advertisement for the desperate sandpaper leers and expansive hollow dankness of the parent album. That after trying so hard to be brand new, Brand New had let themselves down here.
This was and is bullshit. "The Quiet Things..." was the final cut, the coup de grace for an entire genre they'd left bleeding on the floor. Having slammed the door, they came back to burn the building. You can't head somewhere (brand) new until you've left some other place behind, and the whole fucking point of the elevator into Hell is that it starts at the top (listen to that guitar shifting downward as we head into each verse; these lads knew what they were doing).
Where the elevator ended up is a tale for another time. All that matters here is the soundtrack on the way down.
You'd struggle to do any better than this.
B-side
Bonus B-side (ignore the shaky first couple lines)
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