Daily Dose: Brand New Friend, “Hate It When You Have To Go”
Photo by Conor Kerr Photography Music Features Brand New Friend
Daily Dose is your daily source for the song you absolutely, positively need to hear every day. Curated by the Paste Music Team.
Curating a festival lineup is a tricky business. When every band gets a 30-minute set, followed in quick success, it’s nearly impossible to create a natural flow of thematically, sonically aligned music. So, when I saw Bitch Falcon at The Workman’s Club in Dublin during Hard Working Class Heroes, it was only after the blissful pop-punk of Brand New Friend rekindled my jet-lagging energy.
Led by siblings Taylor and Lauren Johnson, Brand New Friend is a North Coast four-piece based in Castlerock, a village on northern coast of Northern Ireland. With Taylor’s vocals that manage to carry melodies in his speak-singing and Laura’s harmonies and piano and synth accompaniment, the indie band makes happy sounding sad songs with the same kind of youthful energy that would be perfectly at home on the Warped Tour.
Although Brand New Friend released their Debut EP American Wives in May 2016, the band has been releasing new singles with regularity since. “Hate It When You Have To Go,” their third official single led by Laura’s plinking keyboard line, is their most polished offering.
As Taylor writes, “’Hate It When You Have To Go’ is at its heart a really honest, simple love song. I wrote it after a night spent in the docks with my girlfriend, where we made wishes on street lamps because we couldn’t see the stars. It’s about the beautiful times when you have no money, no idea what you’re doing, but all the time in the world to figure it out.”
“Hate It When You Have To Go” will appear on the band’s forthcoming mini-album Seatbelts for Aeroplanes, due out in early 2018. Check out the fun video for “Hate It When You Have To Go,” filmed, directed and edited by Iain “Gong” Duffin, below.