Rating: 4.5/5 stars
A secret perk to obsessing over “underground” music is the gratification of having been there first. Sure, I have never been to The Windmill, let alone Brixton or even England, but I remember listening to Black Country, New Road (BC, NR) on the alternative page on Bandcamp back in 2021, which is close enough. This was before music festivals bumped them up in their posters and sarcastic internet culture lumped them with Neutral Milk Hotel and The Smiths as muses of “male manipulator” music.
Their 2022 sophomore success “Ants from Up There” granted them a wider audience of Gen-Z indieheads who cried to an elongated Arcade Fire spinoff and reminisced about their first breakup that may or may not have existed. I am sort of joking — I love the album and its story of a man who just wants to escape the ashes of a romance’s agonizing burnout. But the album’s reception drew both critical and popular acclaim that eclipsed that of the band’s debut from a year minus one day prior, “For the first time.” What “Ants from Up There” had as misery, “For the first time” had as fear. “For the first time” gracefully swings around wonky jazz, semi-ironic pop culture references, neo-no wave blasts of noise and paranoid sprechgesang from their baritone lead singer. I like it better.
I intentionally omit their former lead singer’s name because his very absence is the elephant in the room whose stomping interrupts any impartial review of their new music. In short, four days before the band released “Ants from Up There,” their singer amicably left the band due to struggles with mental health. BC, NR’s first post-departure release, the live recording of concerts at Bush Hall, re-introduced the band in a much more twee and happy light. It is lighter on guitar and heavier on the piano; they trade their old lead’s anxious male baritone with more sirenic vocals from their three female members. Some fans privately longed for their previous era. Sorry, but it is not coming back.
Which finally leads us to BC, NR’s first true studio effort under their newly altered line-up, “Forever Howlong.” The band sticks to the lightly kitschy energy from “Live at Bush Hall.” To say they have flipped their frown upside-down misunderstands the sound of their back catalog. “Forever Howlong” is more like taking a miserable storm cloud and making glitter from its silver lining. It is not exactly happier, just prettier and more mellow. What was dramatic is now theatrical. What was unnerving is now weird. What was experimental is now progressive. The first sound you hear is a harpsichord.
I should quickly note that while each member does have a specialty instrument, evidently so in their live shows, on this album especially, they each tend to an array of instruments, from violinist Georgia Ellery’s mandolin to drummer Charlie Wayne’s banjo. But the real sonic shift is the vocals. The tracklist switches between Ellery, bassist Tyler Hyde (who also plays harmonium and clarinet) and pianist May Kershaw. Hyde said in an interview with Pitchfork that the three make up “a pretty wide spectrum of womanhood.”
Through intricate compositions and complex emotions, the band has matured into a conscious and intentional sound. Yet “Forever Howlong” exists in this oxymoron of youthful vintage. The band lifts their chamber pop sound from the easy listening of the 1960s or the Beach Boys’ pop appropriation of classical sounds. Yet the album sounds so young. Ellery sings about falling in love with her BFF on “Besties.” The song sighs the queer trope of a blurring of friendship and love. Its optimistic chorus could precede the tragic aftermath of a tale like Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”:
“Yeah, I know what’s expected of me
“Besties, night and day
“Remember when I said he shouldn’t treat you that way, and are you sure?
“I know I want something more.”
In true BC, NR fashion, the band uses pop culture as a lyrical instrument. Ellery tells her bestie to lean into being a “walking TikTok trend” as a nod to the current cultural zeitgeist. But she also sincerely pens a feeling about resisting the feeling that their foray into sapphic love is merely a product of the time.
Similarly, Hyde relishes in the oscillation of teenage life on “Salem Sisters.” She sings a spooky metaphor of the Salem witch trials for what “between the howls lie whispers,” that is, how gossip ostracizes her peers from what was otherwise a frolic into “salad days.”
The band’s knack for storytelling plays out akin to the folksy epics of Joanna Newsom or the confessional verses of latter-day Fiona Apple. Ellery seems to continue where “Besties” left off on “Two Horses,” bisexually alone: “Solitary awaits me out there/I know she will.” Note how she genders solitude as feminine, but then the gruff mystique of a James Dean figure attracts her. Nevertheless, she faces a second tragedy once this man fools her and kills her horses.
Kershaw sings the title track like a cross between the flute obsessions of Björk’s “Utopia” and the whimsical gloom of Emma Watson in “Poor Things.” The lyrics meander into a strain of consciousness about remembering your beans and Vitamin B and imagining the bald man walking his dog across the street has a UFO’s halo.
The album’s stand-out track is Hyde’s “Nancy Tries to Take the Night.” The song compounds the whole album’s folksy orchestration and poetic diction with a depressive story of a woman resorting to suicide after bearing a miscarriage during a shameful marriage. Hyde’s reaches from somber lows to sorrowful highs.
From mirthful celebrations of youth and love and morose tales of death and woe, BC, NR has redefined their sound to baroque territory while keeping, if not elevating, their emotional heights. “Forever Howlong” successfully experiments with what the band can do after distributing their songwriting across the band. I expect their fanbase to evolve along with the sound, particularly from the stereotypical doomer male to a tangent of left-of-dial sad girls, the sort who gatekeep Japanese Breakfast and pray to Sylvia Plath. The new BC, NR is undeniably more twee and feminine, a complete flip from the bold and noisy atmosphere of “For the first time.” And a good thing. But the old does not die due to the new; it gains a new bestie.
Image from Black Country, New Road via Youtube
