Black Country, New Road perform a whole set of new music at Bristol’s Strange Brew
Cambridge-born post-punk sextet prove this new era of the band will be just as groundbreaking as the last.
Photo: Holly Whitaker
Mere days before Black Country, New Road released Ants From Up There, the follow up to their Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, lead singer and lyricist Isaac Wood announced his departure from the group, citing problems which seem linked to anxiety inhibiting his ability to play live. Alongside the statement came the news that, despite cancelling all planned shows, the band would continue and had already begun to write new material. For any band, the loss of a frontman is felt deeply – but a songwriter and singer as idiosyncratic and irreplaceable as Isaac Wood meant that any new songs would surely mean a completely different sound, direction and, thus, era for the group.
Soon after, a small venue tour was announced, road-testing what they had created in a remarkably short space of time, which sold out in a matter of seconds. This show, at Strange Brew, Bristol was the third stop of the tour.
The excitement is palpable upon arrival. “What do you think the new stuff is going to be like?” is heard muttered from one concert goer to another, as well as a couple of ‘true fan’ discussions – “Oh, you’ve seen them twice? I’ve seen them five times. First time was when they first formed. Yeah, I guess you could say I’m pretty diehard”.
Plantonica Erotica support with tunes that range from the ethereal to the tongue-in-cheek (a spoken-word vocal takedown of Pablo Picasso’s infamous philandering is particularly fun). After, even the very presence of BC, NR’s saxophonist Lewis Evans on stage to sound check is enough to elicit small whoops and applause.
Entering fittingly to Portishead’s Glory Box, the band’s appearance turns the whoops to hollers. The first track Up Song begins with a plucky sax riff which soon explodes into fast-paced rock, firing on all cylinders; the final refrain is: “Look at what we did together / BC, NR friends forever”. Drummer Charlie Wayne admits outside the venue later that the song “is a bit of a silly one” but the almost childlike, innocent, proud nature of the declaration makes the audience raise the roof with cheers.
The set, running just shy of an hour, consisted of only nine songs. Keen to share the burden of writing lyrics and frontman duties, bassist Tyler Hyde, pianist May Kershaw and Lewis Evans all have their time to shine vocally, and each seem to have spearheaded the penning of the tunes they sing themselves.
Hyde conducts the opening of I Won’t Always Love You so her vocals match the rhythm of the song’s instrumental, it eventually ending in a breakdown that seems like an evolved version of something from their debut. She also fronts Laughing Song, which turns from song with a jazz swing into a drone-filled epic with powerful half-time drums. Evans’ two songs are optimistic, sweet and charming; The Wrong Trousers slowly builds over a militaristic snare drum and Across The Pond Friend is a light, endearing track that doesn’t take itself too seriously (Evans’ introduces it by saying: “So, umm… everyone has those friends that are obsessed about going to space. Like, fuck those people! This is a song about them”).
Violinist Georgia Ellery is absent due to commitments with her band Jockstrap but Nina Lim fills in wonderfully. Ellery’s song Geese is folky and wistful, vocals gliding over a slow, swaying time signature. Also markedly folky is Kershaw’s The Boy, a track chock-full of nature-filled imagery in three chapters which allows Evans to bust out the flute. However, it’s her song Turbines/Pigs which is the set highlight; her vocal talent is showcased in a tune that starts as a solo number with the other band members sitting on stage listening but crescendoes into an awesomely powerful, all guns blazing summit that leaves us in the audience reeling. The biggest cheer of the night.
Following this, Hyde announces the next song Dancers will be the last. A loud groan from the whole crowd emanates. “We literally don’t have any more songs!” she says. The song seems to encompass all of what they have shown us tonight as we look forward to what will come next and has an almost end-credits feeling to it; a musical ‘goodbye… for now!’.
After the set, we immediately turn to each other and discuss exuberantly our thoughts on this new era of the group. The man next to me says “I’m genuinely speechless. How do they do it?”
Naysayers will be silenced – the future is bright for Black Country, New Road.