Deja Entendu

Deja Entendu (French for "already heard")[4] is the second studio album by American rock band Brand New, released on June 17, 2003, by Triple Crown Records and Razor & Tie.

"[5] The album, considered the band's "breakthrough",[6][7] was Brand New's first to chart in the United States (at number 63), and its two singles "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows" and "Sic Transit Gloria...

[12] According to drummer Brian Lane, "Jesse [Lacey] wrote a lot of the lyrics about different things than 'I just broke up with my girlfriend' for the new record.

[19] "Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't" is a line from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and "Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades" is a quote from Wes Anderson's film Rushmore.

"I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light" is a quote from the Bruce Brooks sports novel The Moves Make the Man, and borrows lines from the song "Chumming the Ocean" by the band Archers of Loaf.

"Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis" is a song that Lacey describes as being about his worst nightmare, turning into a washed-up figure after his prime has ended.

[17] "Good to Know That If I Ever Need Attention All I Have to Do Is Die" criticizes the music industry and "when managers, labels, agents and lawyers get their claws on the prize money".

[17] The song "Play Crack the Sky" was about the 1951 shipwreck of the FV Pelican at Montauk Point, New York where 45 people died within a mile of the lighthouse.

Lacey claimed the song "touches on parts of life that I don't talk about a lot [...] I have grown up around water being from living on Long Island.

[24] During a show on his 2007 solo tour with Kevin Devine, Jesse explained that the title was a reference to Mylon LeFevre song "Crack the Sky".

Spin dubbed this trend "mainstreamo", but Lacey rebuked the hype, believing that "I think it’s all gonna fall through in a year and a half, maybe sooner.

All you can really do is try hard to be one of the bands that does manage to stick.”[7] The program director for influential Washington, D.C. rock radio station WHFS noted that "we haven’t reached the point where Puddle of Mudd fans are calling up requesting Brand New.”[7] Following the album's success, Triple Crown Records knew that they had no chance of re-signing Brand New following the conclusion of their two-album deal.

However, Lacey did not believe Rickly, as he noted how the label had told Thursday to rewrite their album War All the Time in order to placate the executives and did not want that happening to Brand New as well.

AllMusic gave Deja Entendu four out of five stars, stating that:As of 2003, Brand New had sidestepped any notion that they'd be stuck in the prototypical mold found on Your Favorite Weapon.

Produced by Steven Haigler (Pixies, Quicksand), this sophomore effort finds Brand New maturing, reaching for textures and song structures instead of clichés.

[1]Rolling Stone praised the album: "Deja Entendu is an emo masterpiece if ever there was one, applying the intensity of post-hardcore and oddly sexy grooves to sophisticated and impassioned songwriting.

"[41] Pitchfork gave the album a positive review, complimenting its "air of substance and maturity" and comparing "The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot" to The Smiths.

[42] Sputnikmusic gave the album five stars out of five, proclaiming that "We could relate to the way that Lacey screamed "This is the reason you're alone, this is the rise and the fall" at the end of 'Tommy Gun.'

We were just beginning to see how brilliant the lyrics were to 'Play Crack The Sky', a song that simultaneously deals with love, death, and relationships on a singular metaphorical level.

[53] Jason Tate, the founder of AbsolutePunk, said that "When they put out Deja, it was a completely scene-altering album at the time: what people were listening to, what was being made.

"[30] NME wrote, "The lonely spaceman on its cover said it all… Jesse Lacey and co’s 2003 soul-purging was a punky, Morrisseyian essay on isolation.

"[46] Rolling Stone explained the album's legacy as the moment when the band "ditched the bottled-up energy of their debut for moody, textured, cavernous numbers that augmented Lacey's acidic lyrics.

Every band was starting to aim for this intelligent poetic lyricism, this sort of East Coast poetry, with long song titles."