The acclaimed British ensemble is warmer and closer together than ever on their latest album, Forever Howlong.
Ever since emerging in 2018, the six-piece Black Country, New Road, willing or not, have grown and changed in so many ways. A vital name in Brixton’s Windmill scene, their rapid ascension led to their 2021 post-rock debut, For the first time, which received lauding reviews, but lockdown curtailed their touring.
A year later, their theatrical follow-up, Ants from Up There, was released to feverishly glowing praise. Perfect scores flooded in, lionising the collective as one of this decade’s best – but lead vocalist Isaac Wood announced his departure before its release. Down a member and their largest tour cancelled, they had to change once more.
Black Country, New Road
- WHEN: Thursday 26 February
- WHERE: Palace Foreshore
- Tickets: here
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It turns out change was always on the cards. Their jubilant third record, Forever Howlong, is their brightest and sunniest. Nylon strings, mandolin and banjo largely steer the sonic direction. It beams with hopeful optimism, musically a far cry from the dread-inducing post-punk they did as young adults. Talking to their woodwind player Lewis Evans, the tonal shift was more natural than deliberate: Everybody grew up.
“We’re very different to how we were as people, and we’re much less angsty,” Lewis says. “We were making music we thought was the coolest-sounding music in the world, which would be rough and scary. Our music has always been so influenced by the music we’re listening to.”
On Spotify, the band have a series of collaborative playlists containing their favourite songs from a particular period. Bob Dylan, The Smiths, Lana Del Rey, Arthur Russell and the Minecraft soundtrack are some entries that can play in succession. Besides being friends, they’re music fans, Lewis telling me how they “pick up on each other’s music taste” and “send each other music all the time.”
“During [Forever Howlong], we were getting into ‘70s West Coast American songwriters like Randy Newman, Dory Previn and Janis Ian, who are almost a bit tongue-in-cheek in their style,” Lewis shares.
For him personally, while working on Ants from Up There, he’d been listening to Arcade Fire and Neutral Milk Hotel – bands they were compared to at the time.
“I remember thinking at the time, ‘I would love this album if I hadn’t been part of making it.’ I feel the same about this [new] one as well,” Lewis reveals. He doesn’t share that sentiment for their debut, only because post-punk isn’t his thing, but the sense of melody and communal spirit behind the latest material makes it stand out.
Connection is woven throughout Forever Howlong, especially in the opener Besties: A triumphant, saccharine reintroduction hiding more than it shows, with its paradoxical words on how friendships can hurt. It’s sung by Georgia Ellery, who, along with Tyler Hyde and May Kershaw, does vocals on the album, resulting in an anthology-like cohesion.
Despite that subject matter, friendship is a key ingredient in the Black Country, New Road narrative. Following Isaac’s departure, the band wrote and road-tested completely new songs, which were compiled into the Live at Bush Hall concert film.
The film’s opening track, Up Song, sees Tyler lead the band in singing “Look at what we did together / BC,NR friends forever”. Everyone sounds proud of their success, especially given that they moved forward after facing adversity. However, the songs were left behind in that stopgap era for their rushed quality.
“Our relationships with those songs feel very transitory,” Lewis explains. “Just because something’s rushed doesn’t mean it’s of lower quality, but it can feel of lower quality to play and to have written, than when perceived by an audience.”
“We like to take our time with stuff. So, it being rushed like that, the songs don’t sit as well. They can never be more than what they are – we didn’t have loads of time spent writing music in that period.”
With so many minds funnelled into the music, it’s a miracle the six of them successfully wrote in real time. That’s credited to the band’s impressive, democratic dynamic, which I learnt from Lewis: Members will bring their skeleton ideas to the group, then others contribute and workshop their parts. Never do they write something from jamming, which Lewis notes “has never ended up that well.”
“It’s quite variable depending on who’s brought stuff in and how developed the source material is,” he says on the writing dynamic. “Sometimes someone will come in with a tune that’s really far ahead, and all we have to do is learn how to play it. That’s more rare – that happened on the song Two Horses on the record, where Georgia had all of it thought out.”
“Say if it’s May’s tune – I’ll ask May, ‘Am I going for the right thing? Does it suit your song?’ That’s usually how we do it. We’ve always done it, even since the start. It means more people feel close and attached to the music because everyone’s had their part in it, a lot more than if you’re given something to do.
Then, he kindly reflects his admiration for his bandmates: “Everyone is such an amazing musician and artist in their own right, so it’s lucky you get to have these people collaborate on a song with you.”
It seems Black Country, New Road has finally experienced an ordinary rollout with Forever Howlong. This reason is in part why it sounds lighthearted, but Lewis suggests that’s not entirely true: “There’s still darkness – there’s lots of sadness and some quite emotionally intense lyrics, but I don’t want to comment too much on them because I didn’t write them.”
He continues: “What is great about music is that it can often be very self-centred. A lot of music with cynical lyrics is often very self-centred. Maybe this one is a little bit less self-centred, I’m not sure… because it’s lots of people on an album, lots of different people singing, that it’s more about the experience of someone our age in the world that we live in and less of my personal struggles. Those are the things that inspire me to write, but so much of my favourite music is about personal struggles, so I don’t know… It’s an interesting point.”
Now they’re returning to Melbourne for a second time on 26 February at St Kilda’s Palace Foreshore, alongside local artists Way Dynamic and Mouseatouille. Discussing the openers, Lewis speaks as if he’s a concertgoer: “In Australia, there’s so much good music. Like Way Dynamic, he’s an amazing musician and is getting his laurels from Stranger Things actor Charlie Heaton. I love being able to choose the tour supports because it means you get to see an artist you love play every night, which is great.”
They even treat the openers as their friends, which translates to their shows. Lewis proceeds to explain that thoroughly. “I’ll never want to get a certain support for the sake of ticket sales. At the end of the day, the quality of the show is so much more important than it selling out – I love selling out shows, it’s an amazing feeling – but I’d rather it be really busy, not sold out, and have amazing supports and the show be a really good all-round gig because the support is part of the show too.”
Clearly championing local music, Lewis recognises how valuable such a leg-up can be. At the end of the day, that action transcends industry success – Black Country, New Road are indeed music fans at heart, but friends first and foremost, especially with the bands they perform with. That quality makes their musicianship even more special.
He concludes: “There’s nothing better than buying tickets to a really good band that you like, then you love the support, and you think it was amazing. That’s a great thing.”
You can get tickets to see Black Country, New Road play live in Melbourne at Palace Foreshore on 26 February here.
