Brand New at Roy Wilkins Auditorium, St Paul (23 Oct 2016)

Brand New Setlist

The show started with a quick, eleven song set from Modern Baseball. The crowd seemed to ignore this up and coming indie-rock group but they didn’t let it affect their high energy performance.

The Front Bottoms was next, they seem to have taken the scene by storm with their real-life lyrics and their honest live shows. These guys don’t try to be anything other than what they are and that makes their set feel real and full of conviction.

The stage was set up to look more like a living room with floor lamps placed across the stage, a TV, and even a couch that was occupied by two random guys that sat there making drinks and nodding to the music throughout the set. The New Jersey group played through a ten and half song set (they stopped one song mid lyric due to someone getting injured and they ended up just scrapping the song altogether) and captivated the crowd the whole way through.

After months of promising fans a brand new full length, Brand New announced that the release of said album will be delayed and, in order to apologize in a way, they would play their 2006 release, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, in its entirety during this headlining tour. The crowd was more than into the idea of playing this album front to back as it is frequently considered their best by fans and critics alike.

The album has a little bit of everything. There are high energy songs that were performed with more than enough energy to fill the entire auditorium, and slower, more emotionally intense songs that, in the live setting, seemed to be much more high energy.
The crowd seemed to go silent as singer Jesse Lacey sang through “Jesus” which is one of the most mellow and haunting songs on the album. You could hear sniffles in the crowd and see tears flowing down the faces of some audience members. This was in complete contrast to the giant moshpit that had opened up during the first song of the album, “Sowing Season”.

Before playing The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, this legendary group treated the crowd to a couple older songs and one new one.

The band came out on stage and opened their set with their powerful new single “I Am A Nightmare” but then quickly reverted to older songs off, my personal favorite albums of theirs, Deja Entendu which have a much more depressive feel to them but again, in the live setting they were still full of energy.

Brand New is slated to break-up in 2018. They have a line in their song “Soco Amaretto Line” that says “stay 18 forever” and that’s exactly what they plan to do so make sure to catch them live before it’s too late!

Remaining tour dates: