Brand New

Brand New talk to Rock Sound about not talking to magazines like ours. Confused?

Posted Monday, 3 December 2007 in

Brand New started 2007 with a simple idea. To stop talking. The band had long been fed up with the process of talking to the press and then despising their eventual portrayl in each resultant piece so they decided to stop doing press. However, as the year went on the interview requests kept rolling in as people thought the band would relent on their stance. As the band catch up with Rock Sound they reflect on the impact of their idea.

''I believe there were a few that kept asking to talk to us,'' admits frontman Jesse Lacey. ''We told our record company and our management about our plans to stop doing press and originally we had to talk them through it first as the idea did not compute. So I would say no to three or four interviews and then a week later the same interviews would reappear on the schedule. Nothing changed in that week so it took them a while to realise that when we were saying no to stuff we really meant it.''

Despite the band's reticence to talk to members of the music industry the frontman is keen to stress that the reasoning is not overtly malicious. ''The main thing about any of that is that we don't want to seem unappreciative. Anyone that wants to give you attention for something you are doing is ultimately really flattering you and we do not take that for granted at all. But that part of it did not seem to make any sense at all and had nothing to do with what we wanted to be as a band creatively and as people. We do not mean anything personal by that it is just how it is.''

So the band stopped and released their third record 'The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me' and went on tour. On tour they realised how different the experience was without the constant intrusion of the media. ''Even two interviews in a day can ruin the day,'' admits Lacey. ''You might sleep late and when you wake up you are at a venue which is usually never in a place that is condusive to doing anything constructive. You are inside, backstage or on a bus but there is this time of day after soundcheck and before the show where you get a chance to go do something and somehow the interviews always get scheduled in the middle of that time so you go from waiting to soundcheck to waiting to do an interview to waiting to do the show. If you knock out that one thing you always hated about the day suddenly you have a lot more time and the touring experience becomes a whole new experience as there is so much to see and do when you travel, even in the States.''

Lacey sums it up perfectly with his final remark. ''When you go on tour you do not want to be just a band, you want to be a normal person as well.''