Taking Back Sunday - "Brooklyn" (2006)

You can say what you want about Taking Back Sunday, but they write great songs. Not to mention the fact that a lot of today’s “screamo” and “emo” groups are just trying to recreate the greatness of TBS’s debut Tell All Your Friends, and their not doing it well. Truthfully, if Tell All Your Friends came out now, I probably wouldn’t like it. Sure it’s a little juvenile and immature, but at 18 so was I, so I dug it. The back and forth vocals of Adam Lazzara and John Nolan, was something that hadn’t been done in this way before. Their voices matched so well, it was hard to tell who was singing what at times. But every line was like a hook. When Nolan left the band in 2003 I was worried that their next album wouldn’t be up to snuff, but when I got my hands on Where You Want To Be in the summer of 2004, my worries were gone. Nolan had been sufficiently replaced by former Breaking Pangea front man Fred Mascherino, whose voice was also a great compliment to Lazzara’s. With this album, TBS saw a spike in popularity, due to the success of the first single “A Decade Under the Influence.” Suddenly the kind of music TBS was making was very popular and copycat bands were signed to record labels coast to coast. In April of last year TBS released their third album Louder Now, and while I liked it, it didn’t excite me like the previous two records. Maybe you can chalk that up to being older, but it seems like Taking Back Sunday just kind of stuck with what worked and didn’t venture out to any unknown territory. That’s not entirely bad, because their formula is a good one and they still wrote some good songs, but it just seemed a little off. In my opinion, we could have done without the re-recorded version of “Error: Operator,” (the original appeared on the Fantastic 4 soundtrack.) That song was ok as a soundtrack song, but it didn’t belong on the album. Unfortunately, today’s song didn’t make the final cut. I think “Brooklyn” is actually better than at least three songs on Louder Now and I’m baffled as to why it was left off. In fact it would have made an excellent single. The chorus is great, the overall sound is a little more pop and less punk, but in a good way. At least TBS included it on the iTunes version of the album. It also surfaced as a b-side on the UK single for “Twenty-Twenty Surgery.” Those are the two places to find it, but you may also find it floating around on the web somewhere. For now, just listen to it and wonder with me why it didn’t make the record.


Taking Back Sunday - "Brooklyn"