Black Country, New Road are an experimental rock band from Cambridge, England. Though most commonly categorized as Post-Rock or Post-Punk, the band consistently defies attempts to pigeonhole them into a single genre or scene, incorporating elements of everything from Baroque Pop to klezmer into their sound. Thus far, the band has been defined by their dense, dynamic sound which carries influences from everything from Arcade Fire to Ornette Coleman, as well as frontman Isaac Wood's Brutally Honest, Reference Overdosed, self-deprecating lyrics and hammy speak-singing vocal style.
The members came together in 2015 under the name Nervous Conditions, with Connor Browne on lead vocals and Johnny Pyke as second drummer. The group gained a good deal of clout playing around London, particularly at the Windmill venue in Brixton, and even recorded a full length entitled Zak's Anniversary. However, accusations of sexual misconduct surfaced against Browne, and the band split. Zak's Anniversary remains shelved to this day, though reasonably high quality bootlegs of Browne-era tracks can be easily found online.
The band reconvened in 2018 as Black Country, New Road, with their name being taken from a Wikipedia article generator. Guitarist Isaac Wood stepped up as lead vocalist, and after releasing a single entitled "Athens, France", the band added Luke Mark as second guitarist, completing their lineup for the next few years. The band quickly started gaining acclaim as part of the burgeoning scene springing up around the London venue The Windmill, along with others such as black midi (with whom they've collaborated for live shows) and Squid. They released a second single, "Sunglasses", in July 2019, which garnered even greater acclaim from critics, and after signing to Ninja Tune records and touring prolifically across the UK and Europe, released their debut album, For the First Time, in February 2021. Featuring rewritten versions of their first two singles alongside 4 new cuts, the album was a critical and financial success.
Their second album, Ants From Up There, was released a year later in February 2022. Featuring a softer, more accessible sound, it was yet another success for the band. However, a week prior to the album's release, frontman Isaac Wood announced his amicable departure from the band due to severe mental health issues. All planned tour dates were cancelled, with the band retiring all of Isaac's tracks from their live rotation. They started touring again later in the year, debuting new songs live with multiple members sharing vocal duties. The band has confirmed that work on a new album is well underway, and that the door is open to Isaac should he ever wish to return to the band.
Discography:
- "Athens, France" (2019, single)
- "Sunglasses" (2019, single)
- For the First Time (2021)
- Ants From Up There (2022)
- Live at Bush Hall (2023, Concert Film)
Band members:
- Isaac Wood - Guitar, lead vocals (2018-2022)
- Luke Mark - Guitar, backing vocals
- Lewis Evans - Saxophone, lead vocals (2022 onward)
- Tyler Hyde - Bass, backing vocals, lead vocals (2022 onward)
- Georgia Ellery - Violin, backing vocals, lead vocals (2022 onward)
- May Kershaw - Keyboards, backing vocals
- Charlie Wayne - Drums
The world's second best Slint tribute act provides examples of:
- Album Intro Track: "Instrumental" on For the First Time and "Intro" on Ants From Up There.
- Arc Symbol: Concorde jets are mentioned throughout Ants From Up There, with a model of one appearing on the cover as well.
- Arc Words:
- "Black country" is referenced in 3 separate songs on For the First Time.
- "Concorde" is a recurring symbol used throughout Ants From Up There, most obviously in the song "Concorde", but also in "Basketball Shoes" and "The Place Where He Inserted the Blade". Isaac directly refers to Concorde, the supersonic airliner
, as a symbol of beauty and graceful romance, but it also alludes to the "Concorde Fallacy" of investing in what may end up being a lost causenote , additionally implying that said love may in reality be unrequited, futile, and in turn ultimately fueled by codependence.
- Boléro Effect: Used in most of their songs, though not to the same extent as crescendocore bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Explosions in the Sky. "Basketball Shoes" and "Snow Globes" are easily the grandest examples, though "Opus" and "Haldern" are also very notable here. "Turbines/Pigs" is another excellent example, starting as a Lonely Piano Piece with other instruments gradually joining throughout before exploding instrumentally for the climax of the song.
- Book Ends: Live at Bush Hall begins with "Up Song" and concludes with "Up Song (Reprise)".
- Break Up Song:
- "Basketball Shoes" is about the narrator's life post break-up. They aren't taking it that well.
- "I Won't Always Love You" is a more straightfoward example.
- Breather Episode: "Track X" on For the First Time, the only song below 5 minutes and only song without percussion on the album.
- Call-Back: "Snow Globes" harkens back to "Opus" on the first album with its mention of "the clamp"; an ambiguous reference to some negative force in Isaac's life.
- Celebrity Song: An unreleased track titled "Kendall Jenner."
- Concept Album: Ants From Up There is a rather loose one about a co-dependent person and the dissolution of their relationship.
- Concert Film: Live at Bush Hall chronicles three nights of performances at the titular venue, with only the songs written after Isaac's departure being played. Taking a page from Stop Making Sense, each night of the performance has stage decorations and costumes with a different theme (prom night, Americana, and haunted pizzeria), and the film cuts between them nonlinearly with some pretty clever editing. Reportedly, as the band doesn't intend to record any of the songs on a studio album, this film is the definitive version of this material.
- Cool Shades: Parodied in "Sunglasses", where the narrator wears the titular sunglasses to hide the fact that he is fucking terrified of everybody around him.
- Crossover: black midi, New Road, which is both whole bands playing together as one unit.
- Epic Instrumental Opener:
- The 5:27 "Instrumental" on For the First Time. Later on the album, "Sunglasses" has a droney, Boléro Effect laden intro before Isaac's vocals enter.
- The 12 minute epic "Basketball Shoes" contains a buildup of about 2 minutes before Isaac starts singing.
- Epic Rocking: Not to crazy extents by the standards of post-rock, but the band still has some pretty long cuts. Only one song on For the First Time, "Track X", is under 5 minutes long, with "Sunglasses" (9:52) and "Opus" (8:02) stretching past 8 minutes. Ants From Up There features some shorter, more accessible songs, but also gives us "Concorde" (6:03), "Bread Song" (6:21), "The Place Where He Inserted the Blade" (7:13), "Snow Globes" (9:13), and "Basketball Shoes" (12:37). Of their post Isaac tracks, "Turbines/Pigs" is consistently around 9 minutes in length, while "Dancers" is a little over 6 minutes.
- Erotic Dream: In its earliest iteration, "Basketball Shoes" was about one involving Charli XCX. This is still present to a lesser extent on the finished version, though it's no longer explicitly about a specific person.
- Gender-Blender Name: Tyler Hyde is actually a woman.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: The band became one following Isaac's departure.
- Grief Song: "Mark's Theme" is a tribute to Evans' uncle, who passed away of COVID-19 in 2021.
- Large Ham: Isaac's delivery can get pretty intense at times. One YouTube comment on the single version of "Sunglasses" describes him as sounding like he's "standing on a windowsill yelling at a police negotiator". He mostly toned this down on Ants From Up There, having a more subdued, sad delivery on most songs.
- Lighter and Softer:
- Ants From Up There is a much lighter, prettier album than the dark, anxious For the First Time, with a sound more influenced by Baroque Pop and show tunes as well as more uplifting lyrical themes.
- More generally, the studio versions of the songs tend to have cleaner, more poetic lyrics than the live and single versions. "Sunglasses" is the most obvious example here, with the Cluster F-Bomb that was originally present in the song's second half being removed entirely.
- Live Album: Live At Bush Hall.
- Lonely Piano Piece: Over half of "Turbines" is May singing unaccompanied by anything but her own piano.
- Longest Song Goes Last: "Basketball Shoes" (12:37) on Ants From Up There.
- Miniscule Rocking: So far the band's shortest songs are the instrumentals "Intro" (0:53) and "Mark's Theme" (2:57).
- Mundane Made Awesome: Isaac can take situations that would ordinarily cause mild anxiety or embarrassment in most people and, with the help of the backing track, make them apocalyptically horrible. "Science Fair", about developing a parasocial crush on a dancer at Cirque du Soleil, and "Sunglasses", about wearing sunglasses to hide his anxiety from passerby on the street, are sterling examples, with both tracks building up to dissonant climaxes that wouldn't sound out of place on a Red-era King Crimson track. The early live track "Algorithm" also qualifies, with Isaac shouting about absent-mindedly scrolling Instagram over an ominous soundscape.
- Non-Indicative Title: "Chaos Space Marine" has very little to do with Warhammer 40k.
- Precision F-Strike:
- "I am locked away in a high tech wraparound translucent blue-tinted fortress, and you cannot FUCKING touch me" in the original recording of "Sunglasses".
- "She probably spoke of something interesting, but still I was so bored, I was so fucking bored" from "Dancers."
- Rearrange the Song: "Athens, France" and "Sunglasses" both received slight rewrites when the band recorded them for the debut album. Both tracks had their lyrics changed and had Lighter and Softer production to fit the sound of the record, with "Athens, France" getting a new outro while "Sunglasses" had a new intro added that extended the song's length to nearly `10 minutes.
- Self-Deprecation: The main thrust of Isaac's lyrics. He tends to present his narrators' failings in as sardonic and pathetic a manner as possible, with an oversharing vulnerability that has earned him comparisons to Pinkerton.
- Sequel Song: "Up Song" and "Up Song (Reprise)."
- Singer Namedrop: Both the band name and Isaac's own name are referenced in a few songs.
- The album version of "Athens, France" mentions "the new road built on black country ground" while "Science Fair" ends with Isaac shouting "It's black country out there" as a form of Madness Mantra. "Opus", the closing track, begins with the line "What we built on black country ground".
- The single version of "Sunglasses" has the narrator's love interest repeating "Now fuck me like you mean it this time, Isaac!" at the climax. The album version replaced this line with "Now burn what's left of all the cards you kept." "Track X" has a reference to the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac as a metaphor for Isaac's real life relationship with his father, which is evidently difficult.
- Shout-Out: Many, to all manner of different types of media. Isaac's lyrical style verges on Speaks in Shout-Outs at times.
- The opening track of Ants from Up There is called "Chaos Space Marine".
- There's another song on the record called "Good Will Hunting".
- "Science Fair" refers to the band as "the world's second best Slint tribute act."
- "Sunglasses" references the Fonz, the Jack of Hearts, Richard Hell, Scott Walker, and Kanye West in rapid succession in the second half.
- "Opus" contains a mention of "Thunder Road".
- Two separate tracks on Ants From Up There describe a girl as looking like Billie Eilish.
- "She loves pop culture, she has 'thank u, next' stuck in her head" on the original version of "Athens, France".
- "Track X" shouts out a number of the band's contemporaries, including black midi, Jerskin Fendrix, and Famous, as well as the Biblical story of Isaac and Abraham.
"Dancing to Jerskin, I got down on my knees
And told you I loved you in front of Black Midi
I told my friend Jack that it could have been you
I know it was funny, but I was struggling too."- The lyric "The good hunter's guide to a bad night" is presumably a reference to Bloodborne, a game in which the player character is known as a "good hunter."
- Isaac has confirmed that the recurring symbol of "the clamp" is a reference to Clamps from Futurama.
- "Turbines/Pigs" has allusions to The Master and Margarita * and The Wizard of Oz. *
- The Something Song: "Bread Song," "Up Song," and "Laughing Song."
- Surprisingly Gentle Song: "Track X" has no drums whatsoever and a more melancholic, nostalgic tone than the rest of For the First Time.
- True Companions: The band are all very good friends with each other, and their chemistry as a collective largely seems to stem from them just getting along great in normal life. It's even the subject of "Up Song.""Look at what we did together
BCNR, friends forever!" - Vocal Tag Team: The band's approach following Isaac's departure, splitting vocals among Tyler, Lewis, Georgia and May.
- "Oh god of weather, Henry knows
Snow globes don't shake on their own"
