Brand New - You Won’t Know

After six years of listening to it regularly (from every few days to every few months, depending on how I’m doing), I’ve had a lot of theories about The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me.

One of them is that everyone who loves this album has one song they can’t listen to without breaking down.

For me, it’s usually been “Luca.” Occasionally, “Not the Sun” or “Degausser” (because if you listen to it at the right time, those two lines repeated nine times through the second half are like bullets to the stomach). But these days, my tipping point is this one, the first song I heard from this album, the one that hooked me in at 17.

Why this album, over and over? Fuck if I know. That raw hurt, up against melody. That feeling of the lyrics breaking me apart and putting me back, hastily, messily. That longing to be loved, to be someone better, sitting right at the center of every song.

Sometimes you have to be submersed in your own pain in order to distance yourself from it, and when I hurt, this album is what it feels like.

But again, fuck if I know.