According to the Future Idiots, and I tend to agree, bands have destroyed iTunes and Spotify with their “Best of” albums. In FI's always unconventional and semi-satirical way, the guys decided to offer up their own distorted interpretation of what a "Best of" album was. Their idea wasn’t necessarily to offer up the least enjoyable music that they had to offer, but rather to glorify some of the embarrassingly nostalgic pieces that were trimmed from over a decade worth of work.
The aptly named Brown Album is meant to convey the presence of B-Sides and openly acknowledge that some of the material may be a little rough around the edges. The album initially contained around 15 passable but ultimately unexciting tracks. That’s when the guys unearthed a rogue hard drive or two from the FI vaults and uncovered some of the more entertaining tracks that were eliminated. This second pass through their discography and a light bit o re-mastering effectively created a second iteration of, the Brown Album. The one where old-school fun meets up with some kickass one-offs that were simply lost in the shuffle of creating over a dozen albums. Some of the material wasn’t even supposed to be nixed from the original albums. “It’s Gonna Be Me” by N’Sync along with a few others were slated for a legitimate release. Sadly, these unlucky few songs met an untimely fate on a corrupt hard drive. Thankfully, through the magic of time and new equipment came the ability to resurrect these 51 gems.
All in all, the album has some delightfulness, some quirkiness and some uniqueness that might have been better off left in the backseat of a hot car, that was abandoned, and on fire, on an uninhabited island....you get the point. That point being, that there's 51 Pop-Punk tracks. Most bands don't put that much material out in a career. The Future Idiots are doing it for shits and giggles.
