After two years of secrecy surrounding its upcoming album, Brand New has officially leaked the first track over the Internet.
The song, "Sowing Season (Yeah)," from the album "Fight Off Your Demons," is one of several that the Long Island band has been playing live in recent concerts. The album is due Nov. 21 on Interscope.
Brand New has been fiercely protective of its new material. After a handful of bootleg demos leaked onto the Internet, the band axed them from the album. As for "Sowing Season," the group's Website explains that the band originally planned to release the song on its MySpace page on Tuesday, Oct 24. But when an unnamed radio station began playing a pirated copy, the band posted the track four days early on Friday, Oct. 20.
A message on the Website reads in part: "rather than have cutup mp3's floating around, we thought that we would give you the whole enchilada right now. Know that we had a plan to let you hear it first but hey, sometimes the internet is your friend and sometimes it's a pain in the...."
"Sowing Season" offers a glimpse of what could be a harder-edged, more disciplined sound for the band, with singer Jesse Lacey boiling down his usually verbose lyrics to short bursts: "I am not your friend / Not your lover / Not your family."
The album's tracklisting also points to a new terseness: The band's legendarily lengthy titles have been reduced to mostly single words such as "Handcuffs," "Millstone" and "Limousine."
Listen to the new track here.