Black Country, New Road - Post-punk's new road

The sprawling English ensemble Black Country, New Road represent a singular, eclectic voice within the indie scene of the post-punk revival that took off between the 2010s and the 2020s. Six of the band's seven members can be found in mid-2015 in an earlier lineup called Nervous Conditions, which counted eight members in total. The band is based in Cambridge, a city of around 155,000 people, world-famous as the home of one of the most prestigious universities on the planet, and was made up as follows: Isaac Wood on vocals and guitar, Tyler Hyde on bass, May Kershaw on piano and keyboards, Georgia Ellery on violin, Lewis Evans splitting his time between sax and flute, Charlie Wayne on drums (these six would go on to form Black Country, New Road), plus Connor Browne on vocals - the group's true frontman - and Jonny Pyke rounding out Wayne's percussion work.

After releasing a couple of singles and earning solid attention from both audiences and critics - with Quietus going so far as to call them one of the most promising acts in the country - the short-lived story of Nervous Conditions comes to an end when anonymous allegations of sexual assault hit frontman Browne, who leaves the group, followed shortly after by drummer Pyke.

The remaining six members regroup under the name Black Country, New Road, borrowed from one of the main roads running through the West Midlands, a county in west-central England. The new lineup starts playing London venues and begins to draw real interest, largely thanks to their debut single, "Athens, France", released on January 18, 2019 via Speedy Wunderground, the label tied to the south London studio of producer Dan Carey, a key figure in the post-punk resurgence of the last 5-10 years. Carey has also worked with Black Midi on "Schlagenhaim" (Rough Trade, 2019), with Fontaines D.C. on their first three albums (2019-2022), and with Squid on "O Monolith" (Warp, 2023).

Right after the release of "Athens, France", the group brings in a seventh member, Luke Mark on guitar, to beef up the melodic side, and on July 25, 2019 they release their second single, "Sunglasses", which meets with solid success.

Black Country, New Road keep playing shows across the UK, and on October 28, 2020 - almost two years after their debut single - announce they've signed with Ninja Tune to release their first album, For The First Time, which comes out on February 5, 2021, produced by Andy Savours, a sound engineer for several bands (Sigur Rós, Horrors, Arctic Monkeys) making his debut as a producer.

Black Country, New Road sit at the crossroads between the guitar-driven intellectualism of post-rock acts like Slint and June of 44, the anxious edge of Van Pelt's emo, and the jazz tension of Shabaka Hutchings's bands and John Zorn's Masada/Electric Masada project. For The First Time is driven by the urge to carry the band's live energy into the studio, the product of the countless shows they'd played since forming, often alongside Black Midi. The opening "Instrumental" fuses klezmer and post-punk, hinting at a more predictable direction than the one the following "Athens, France" actually takes us in - a track that perfectly embodies the record's three-way split personality, where the phrasing of Karate and American Football meets the lyricism of Murder Capital.

While "Science Fair", one of the album's most intriguing tracks, opens up an experimental gap built on an orchestration somewhere between Gil Evans and Exploding Star Orchestra, steering post-rock toward free jazz and electronics, the elegiac riffs of "Sunglasses" - laid over a bed of synths that chime like bells - and those of "Track X" conjure a seemingly graceful state, full of fractures and openings, recalling the progressions of Canadian bands like Broken Social Scene and Do Make Say Think.

For The First Time holds onto all the tension and unease of the times we lived through during the Covid-19 pandemic, of a capital under social and generational lockdown, with the record standing as a testament to the energy of music built on a strong live component. Driving the songs is the vocal and performative presence of Wood, under the "black star" of David Bowie, who paints small, dysfunctional portraits of everyday life, showing a remarkable narrative and interpretive confidence that keeps our ears constantly pricked for what comes next.

The hype generated by the early singles had no doubt helped build anticipation for this debut, whose quality won over audiences and critics not just in the UK, but across the rest of Europe and overseas too. After debuting at number 4 on the UK Albums Chart, it was nominated for "Album of the Year" at the Mercury Prize and crowned best album of 2021 by the British magazine Loud and Quiet. It was actually on Mercury Prize night that the band confirmed they already had material ready for the follow-up. The lockdowns and social distancing brought on by the pandemic form the backdrop to the writing of the album, which was recorded over the course of two weeks at Chale Abbey Studios on the Isle of Wight, England: an isolated, out-of-the-way spot, far from the band members' usual routine, where their live sound engineer, Sergio Maschetzko - here stepping into the producer's role - aimed to capture as much of the group's creative verve as possible, trying to channel the spontaneity and instinct of the songs without filtering them. The album was preceded by five singles released between October 2021 and January 2022.

The first sign of evolution on Ants From Up There compared to the debut, and it hits with real intensity, is the band's ability to express in music a wide emotional range encompassing various moods, including the overflowing, theatrically tinged euphoria of the album's opening ("Intro", "Chaos Space Marine", "Concorde"), which nods to Arcade Fire with Sarah Neufeld and once again to Bowie, always finding comfort in collective choral energy and group synergy even in the more reflective moments.

The album then saves its most intense tracks for after the opening triptych: the emotional minimalism of "Bread Song" is gorgeous, built with an orchestral sensibility by every member of the band, its dynamics opening and closing like a diaphragm over the course of the song as it moves between classical, jazz and post-rock idioms; the ballad "Haldern" is intimate and personal, with horns, piano and violin pushing the voice into a dance whose shape and broken rhythm mirror the protagonist's own broken ribs.

On "Mark's Theme" a solo sax ushers in the rest of the ensemble for the album's most jazz-inflected passage, while the Ziggy Stardust-à-la theatricality of the opening returns to punctuate the record on "Good Will Hunting" and "The Place Where He Inserted The Blade", the latter placed just before the mournful advance of "Snow Globes" with its searing, free-jazz drum phrasing.

The album closes with the emo/post-rock melancholy of "Basketball Shoes", somewhere between American Football and Slint - one of the first songs the band ever wrote, already a live staple, whose melodic, harmonic and sonic material shapes the rest of the record, from the intro to the various callbacks scattered here and there as fragments within the individual musicians' phrasing. Around thirteen minutes long, the track covers the entire fourth side of the vinyl on its own, distilling both the band's tightness as a unit and the unease running through the record's lyrics.

Ants From Up There was officially released on February 4, 2022 on Ninja Tune. But it's impossible not to view this record in light of what happened four days before its release: Wood, the singer, frontman and the mind behind Black Country, New Road's lyrics, announced he was leaving the band due to mental health issues. His brief statement made a point of praising the journey the band had made together with him, one that had been so fast yet so meaningful, and the rest of the group, after cancelling the tour already planned for summer 2022, announced they would keep making music but, out of respect for Isaac, would no longer play the songs from the first two albums live.

Meanwhile the album debuted at number three on the UK Albums Chart, outperforming its predecessor. The acclaim arrived, however, at a moment of transition: having cancelled the album's promotional shows, the band spent that summer performing without a frontman at various venues across Europe, playing new, previously unreleased material. Two of these shows, held on December 15 and 16, 2022 at Bush Hall in London, were recorded and released by Ninja Tune on March 24, 2023.

Live At Bush Hall captures the English indie ensemble - who themselves chose to record it live rather than in the studio - at a moment when they had bravely managed to stay on their feet, under the weight of expectations from fans and press alike, trying to shake off their fears and express the feelings stirred up by Wood's departure, show after show. Conceived as a prom night - a high-school-style end-of-year dance - the concert's visual dimension comes through in the concert film of the same name, directed by Greg Barnes and premiered at the ICA, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

So it was on tour, and for the sake of touring, that the new material took shape, finally moving past the post-punk dimension of the band's early days with Elton John-worthy flourishes ("The Boy"), Radiohead/Smile-influenced classicism ("I Won't Always Love You") and Queen-style progressions ("Across The Pond Friend"). The live setting brings out a delicate rapport among the band members, who move forward hand in hand, metaphorically speaking, with grace and buoyancy. The songs flow smoothly, interlocking with one another thanks to delicate flute and violin embroidery and energetic, sax-led choral runs, but the theatricality already present on Ants Up From There is pushed to the extreme here, and the emotional drive of For The First Time gets lost along the way: the album in fact reveals a somewhat unclear songwriting direction, flirting with Sufjan Stevens-style eclecticism and edging closer to modern musicals like "Rent".

With Live At Bush Hall, Black Country, New Road thus stage a kind of variety show, once again seeming more suited to live performance than to the song or album format. They also sound like a band in search of direction, and more generally of a voice as steady and present as the individual musicians' skills are solid - a hugely talented ensemble, but currently "an author in search of a character."

On the following studio album, However Howlong (2025), Black Country, New Road continue along the chamber-music trajectory already sketched out on Live At Bush Hall, with no return whatsoever to their early post-punk sound. Harpsichord, harmonium, mandolin and flute join violin and piano in a baroque-pop sound that broadens the band's tonal palette. Less convincing, though, is the songwriting: lacking emotional development and driven by a logic that's more formal than expressive, it struggles to generate real engagement despite seeming to try every trick to achieve it. The impression is of a work caught between stylistic exercise and expressive ambition, never quite finding a convincing balance between the two.

The opener "Besties", with its choir and harpsichord, makes clear the project's ambitious sonic direction, which on tracks like "Socks" evokes the post-Weimar cabaret of Kurt Weill and the experimental textures of Henry Cow, without quite managing to match them in compositional effectiveness. "Happy Birthday" offers one of the record's best moments: a well-constructed harmonic interplay and a recognizable climax, even if its impact is somewhat muted. "For The Cold Country" and "Nancy Tries To Take The Night" swing between pastoral suggestions, avant-pop detours and bursts of agitation, but rarely settle into a solid communicative core.

Overall, However Howlong is an album that explores and opens up possibilities. Partly because of that, though, it comes across as uncertain and unbalanced, as if the collective were still searching for a new language capable of matching its many ambitions. Perhaps a necessary step in a trajectory that keeps moving through uncharted territory, unafraid of losing its way.

Tommaso Carelli (introduzione e parti biografiche), Maria Teresa Soldani (album “For The First Time”, “Ants From Up There”, “Live At Bush Hall”).

Contributions by Marco Sgrignoli ("Forever Howlong")

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