Taking Back Sunday Guitarist Releases High School Demos Featuring Brand New's Jesse Lacey

If you were in your teens in the early 2000s, then chances are you were at least peripherally aware of the borderline incestuous relationships of the members of then-fledgling Long Island emo outfits Brand New and Taking Back Sunday.

In case you need a refresher, though, there was a period up until about 2005 when it became apparent that there was some serious beef existing between the two bands. Immortalised in the bands' early tracks Seventy Times Seven and There's No 'I' In Team, respectively, fans were increasingly drawn into the drama between old best friends John Nolan and Jesse Lacey, rival frontmen in rival bands who were apparently once thick as thieves but fell out over a girl and had to let their feelings out through song.

Tensions eased eventually (well, some of them, but let's not delve into fellow Taking Back Sunday member Adam Lazzarra and his feuds with both Lacey and Nolan — see The Union for his thoughts on Nolan's Straylight Run side-project) — with the bands eventually reaching amicability once more and even performing those iconic sledge songs with each other — but it wasn't always like that, either.

In fact, before their big fallout, Lacey was a member of Taking Back Sunday in their earliest incarnation, a holdover player from his role in a previous band with Nolan, Gudmunder Bjornsen. And, at long last, the world is able to hear what a barely pubescant John Nolan sounded like when he and Lacey were still buds and able to play in the same band together. It's really kind of magical, especially since we've only ever really been exposed to the pair in a post-fight setting. Keep an ear out for cameos from Nolan's siter, Michelle, with whom he would form Straylight Run upon splitting with Taking Back Sunday in the mid-2000s.

Aside from some hilariously high voices (puberty's a monster), perhaps the most surprising aspect of these demos is their quality — Nolan, Lacey and their Gudmunder Bjornsen bandmates are actually unexpectedly competent musicians, with some flourishes arguably showing more imagination than either band displayed on their respective debut full-lengths, Taking Back Sunday's Tell All Your Friends and Brand New's Your Favorite Weapon.

Have a listen to the set of songs, the existence of which Nolan teased with a tweet on 5 May, below. Yep - it took less than two days for the internet to find these things with zero help from the man, because the internet isn't even in the vicinity of screwing around when it comes to gems from 1999 that provide a whole new dimension to one of the alternative US scene's most infamous beefs of the early 21st century.

Nolan is presently crowdfunding his next solo album; see the campaign page for more information.