Black Country, New Road – ‘For the first time’
The seven strong band are giving the likes of Sports Team, black midi and Squid a run for their money with this debut offering.
★★★☆☆
PHOTO: Matilda Hill-Jenkins
Black Country, New Road start off their highly anticipated debut album with an instrumental that sets the tone for the rest of the songs. The track is nothing but effortless; alike puff pastry with its copious layers you’re left struggling to count, and sounding like something soundtracking a Damien Chazelle film.
For the first time, the newest offering from a promising young band (with 7 very good, very talented members, in case you couldn’t keep track), is bound to be divisive — I mean, you can’t please everyone. With the band being compared to acts who don’t fit into any given genre, thus being packed into a box together to form some sort of ‘odd one out’ sound, such as the likes of Squid, black midi, and Girl Band, they’ve become the genre most would describe as simply ‘weird’. What else do you use to describe a band who seamlessly blur the lines between the genres they’re being told they belong to? Sure, they’re a fusion of post-punk and whatever else people brand them as but, for me, they’re a mixture of jazz with a heavy splurging of what can only be described as alternative rock.
They’re not ones to shy away from heavy crescendos, using a mixture of woodwind and string instruments to provide us with a unique sound that sets them apart from their peers. Without a doubt, ‘Opus’, the closer on the six song strong album, is one of their very best so far; strident in it’s attempt at tying the LP together, being the boisterous and vocal-heavy twin sister to the intro, ‘Instrumental’.
With a near perfect debut, the only downfall is the crucial decision to change ‘Athens, France’ - a song that, in my opinion, was leagues above anything else I had heard from them, until they decided to dull it down and make it far more palpable for mainstream audiences. A despondent loss, but the new version still offers us glimpses into the song that once was one of their finest.
The experimental septet full of talented individuals can only go up from here, with the impressive marriage of saxophone accompanied by the hypnotic and moody vocals from frontman Isaac Wood setting them up for a very successful year. 2021 isn’t so bad, after all.
