Even the somber refrain of “Could Never Be Heaven” sneaks up on you, begging you to sing it under your breath while doing dishes and buying groceries. There are some legitimate earworms on this album “451” is blistering with it’s “The Beautiful People”-like drumbeat and skin-shredding chorus “In the Water” and “Same Logic/Teeth” steal liberally from the Modest Mouse guitar playbook and hook themselves into your brain more easily this way. “Can’t Get It Out” is the closest we get to core Brand New here, with Lacey singing about his depression while throwing out lovely one-liners (“ Got my messiah impression/ I think I got it nailed down” “ I’m just a manic-depressive toting around my own cloud”). When I can sort of settle back down.” “Lit Me Up” is a lonely song, and Lacey seems resigned to the absence of others, to the point where his expressed yearning for others feels defeated: “ I wanna open up my heart like the ocean,” he sings through manipulated vocals.

It’s sort of… I think I’m going to be relieved when it’s over. A woman says, “I don’t mind having all this going on inside of me. Opener “Lit Me Up” begins with a clip that alleges to have taken place at the end of extensive psychotherapy. Many of the songs simply begin with guitar strumming, and there’s frequent clips of found recordings (leftovers from the sessions for 2009’s Daisy, naturally) that make the world feel a little less empty, but more alienating. The band never returns to their Your Favorite Weapon roots, but there are a couple songs that sound like the smarter older brothers of Deja Entendu’s self-aware depressive streaks. These 12 tracks are spread out over a full hour, and the record feels like it makes every moment count without feeling like an hour-long album.

Science Fiction, the fifth and purportedly final Brand New album, has hooks, but they don’t grab you that hard on the first listen.

He went from “ Have another drink and drive yourself home/ I hope there’s ice on all the roads” to “ Was losing all my friends/ Was losing them to drinking and to driving” in that three years. By the time the band returned for 2006’s The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, frontman Jesse Lacey was a completely different songwriter. Beginning with the stately pop punk of 2001’s Your Favorite Weapon, they softened for more intricate songwriting on 2003’s Deja Entendu. Radiohead and Björk have deftly managed to accomplish this, compelling listeners to follow them in brand new sonic directions whenever they decide to try on a different face. It takes a lot of skill for musicians to successfully abandon an established sound.

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