By Nicholas Palumbo
Artist: Brand New
Song: “Okay, I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don’t”
Album: Deja Entendu
Mood: Teenage Angst
As humans, we handle stress in many different ways. We can simply sit down with a friend and talk about it, pass out in bed early or eat a few pints of Ben & Jerry’s. There are countless ways to handle any form of stress in your life – and there is certainly no wrong way to handle it.
With my new job promotion taking the better of my free-time and problems with an ex-girlfriend, this week was daunting to say the least. All of my remedies for stress management fell short of my expectations. On rare these occasions, I go to my “Plan B” – a long drive and an angst-filled album from my teenage years. The album, I chose – Brand New’s Deja Entendu – helped me through my awkward high school years and while I tend to no longer listen to those in the same scene and genre, Brand New continues to be a relevant part of my life. So I put to my favourite track – Track 4 (“Okay, I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don’t”) – and drove around. It worked wonders. And because the album is entitled Deja Entendu, French for “already heard,” I listened to the track and then the entire album on repeat.
In my strongest and most passionate opinion, this song is the most well-written song about telling someone off in the whole spectrum of the genre. While artists tend to focus on hiding behind effortless subtleties, Brand New’s niche is in its creative, poetic way to write the truth – the whole truth and nothing but it – in a direct way. We see that in lines such as “This is war / Every line is about who I don’t wanna write about anymore,” and “We’re concentrating on falling apart / We were contenders / We’re throwing the fight.”
If there is someone or something in your life that has you in an angsty tizzy, take a listen to this track. A few plays and the world is right again.
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