‘They seem to win fans, rather than lose them, with every reinvention’
Black Country, New Road at Albert Hall, Manchester
As they kick off a sold-out, two-night stand at the Albert Hall, it’s easy to forget just how choppy the waters were that Black Country, New Road had to navigate to make it here.
The London collective seemed to be living a charmed life after they broke through with their first singles in 2019. Their debut album, For the First Time, was critically adored and went to number four in the albums chart on release in 2021.
A year later, the group was thrown into disarray when frontman Isaac Wood abruptly departed just four days before the arrival of their second record, Ants from Up Here. This might have sunk lesser bands.
In this case, the remaining six members quickly set about writing new material and hit the road three months later with an entirely fresh batch of songs, the only document of which remains their 2023 live album from London’s Bush Hall.
All of which is to say that April’s third full-length, Forever Howlong, is their first proper studio album as this iteration of the band. Two things are striking tonight.
The first is how smoothly they have transitioned from having one lead vocalist to three, with Georgia Ellery, Tyler Hyde and May Kershaw splitting duties roughly equally – and often to stunning effect, particularly when they harmonise on the haunting ‘Mary’.
Also impressive is just how vital these new songs sound live; Forever Howlong is an elegant record, infused with baroque instrumentation and tightly-wound melodies, but they’re unafraid to be louder and looser with them onstage.
A number of tracks build to huge, cathartic crescendos, particularly ‘Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me)’ and ‘Happy Birthday’; on an extended outro to the latter, Lewis Evans’ saxophone and Charlie Wayne’s drums are practically battling each other for prominence.
There’s a little bit of room for cuts from outwith the new record during what is a fairly brisk 70-minute set, although in typical fashion, the band play by their own rules.
‘Dancers’, one of two tracks aired from the Bush Hall album, has been subtly rearranged, while a cover of Big Star’s 1972 song ‘The Ballad of El Goodo’ is a set highlight, partly because they do the song such justice by relaying its lustrous melodies so winningly, and partly because they do not appear to have chosen it by accident; the lyrics speak of self-reliance and defiance, and the refrain of ‘ain’t no one going to turn me ‘round’ is a fitting one for a band who have faced down such adversity in recent years.
More than that, they’ve done it by marching to the beat of their own drum, in terms of both music and message – they make repeated calls for a free Palestine from the stage tonight. For all the challenges the UK music scene is facing, it bodes well that a group as experimental and adventurous as Black Country, New Road can sell out multiple nights at venues this size.
They seem to win fans, rather than lose them, with every reinvention.
