Song of The Day #046

"New Noise" by Refused

I bought The Shape of Punk To Come on a whim when I was around eleven years old. At the time, I listened to a lot of modern punk, pop-punk, emo-punk, etc. (I know: unfortunate), so when I was strolling through Virgin Records and saw a CD called The Shape of Punk To Come, I was thoroughly intrigued. (It didn't hurt that the word Refused looked a lot to me like The Used, a band I liked a lot at the time. Hey, I was eleven; a lot of eleven-year olds like emo.) Regardless, the first time I listened to the CD, I was a little confused. There was, for me, a lot of waiting. A lot of nothing. What were these long segments of funny sounding noise? Why were there saxophones that were playing wrong notes? Why is it only screaming and punk-y for a few seconds? I don't get it! So I put the album away, only to rediscover it sometime last year after reading about how amazing it is. And it is amazing. It's one of the only relevant and interesting punk rock albums since the mid-80s--and "New Noise" is its defining track. Get the recent reissue if you don't already have the album!