After riding out a career-threatening storm of false starts, line-up changes and cancelled tours, Black Country, New Road return with a renewed sense of drive and purpose – and a fantastic new album, Forever Howlong, for good measure.
The Nietzschean aphorism “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” has certainly been proven by Black Country, New Road over the last seven years. The Cambridge six-piece have weathered their share of tribulations since forming in 2018 – most notably when singer Isaac Wood left just as they were readying second album, Ants From Up There, in 2022.
The tour they’d planned had to be jettisoned, making that two cancelled tours in as many years. Somehow, 2025 marks the first time they’ll be going on the road with a brand-new album.
“We’ve toured extensively, but never with any material that had a proper release,” drummer Charlie Wayne confirms. “The first album came out during lockdown; and we didn’t really go far into a touring schedule for the second one, for obvious reasons.”
As a stopgap, BCNR released Live At Bush Hall, a record of new material, in 2023. It showcased the reconfigured unit defiantly singing, ‘BCNR friends forever / Look at what we did together’ on the opener Up Song, which can certainly be read as coming out fighting.
Behind the bravado, though, guitarist Luke Mark paints a picture of near-petrification behind the scenes. “We kind of enjoyed the nights, but it was so stressful,” he says. “We did it as a way of putting music out without really putting music out, and it seemed like a great idea – until we had to do it.
“We had to build the sets ourselves to make it visually interesting. And because the album within our contract, we borrowed money from the label [Ninja Tune] without recourse to pay it back. It was a gamble. We realised we only had three shows to get it right and we were going to be on camera the whole time. We’re all very camera shy, so it was fucking scary.”
Nevertheless, the more they find themselves out of their comfort zone, the more rewarding the work seems to be. Their third album proper, Forever Howlong, is a case in point. Many assumed the group would struggle or even implode without Wood, whose vision was personal, intense and bordering on paranoiac at times.
Conversely, the new work comes largely from three different perspectives, with Tyler Hyde (bass), May Kershaw (keyboards and accordion) and Georgia Ellery (violin, mandolin) singing the songs they brough to the band. Despite that wealth of voices, the album is perfectly cohesive – and eveything seems more feminine, outward-looking, complex and playful. In spite of everything, BCNR appear to be in a very good place right now.
“Thank you! that’s so reassuring,” says Hyde. “It’s really scary putting your voice onto something when people are attached to hearing someone else. It’s important to see it as just a new thing. Therefore we have to accept that there will be people who aren’t going to come with us – and that’s totally fair.
“I respect that – musically we don’t offer something that we used to, so they’ve got to go elsewhere to find their insular, anxious sounds.”
“Or just re-listen to the old stuff?” chips in Wayne.
“It’s still available to buy!” adds Mark.
The breakout star of the record is Ellery, whose busy life also includes being half of electro duo Jockstrap. For the Bush Hall album she’d played violin and performed backing vocals; but she hadn’t been ready to bring songs to the table, largely due to commitments elsewhere.
It’s kind of a nice position to be in; to flex different creative muscles and access different parts of musical character
Charlie Wayne
At the end of Jockstrap’s last tour Black Country, New Road group convened in Falmouth, where they wrote plenty of material. The first single lifted from Forever Howlong was Besties, one of Ellery’s, marking her elevation to joint frontwoman. It’s a gorgeous song too.
“We wanted Georgia to be the first singer on the first release, as it was a very clear marker that she’s here,” says Hyde. “She’s loud and clear!”
Besties has a warm acoustic feel that might be described as “radio-friendly” – if by radio you mean 6 Music or the 70s. It has deceptive quirks, including an erratic time signature and the odd discordant moment that’s soon rescued by euphony.
“It’s a weird song, actually,” says Wayne. “It’s misleading, and that’s what I like about it. It’s very strange when you get into the gubbins of it – but that’s kind of what makes it cool.”
Perhaps even better from Ellery is Two Horses, a tour-de-force with a breathtaking story arc and a galloping second part in keeping with the title. It’s a progressive adventure of a song with a sting in the tail.
“The song that closes the album, Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me), was started with Georgia on vocals around the time of Bush Hall,” Wayne says. “But it just never got breathing space as she was doing a lot of Jockstrap stuff at the time. Two Horses was the first song she wrote deliberately for Black Country, New Road.
“It’s kind of a nice position to be in; to flex different creative muscles and access different parts of musical character. Jockstrap music – although there are obviously overlaps with BCNR in some ways – is very different music.”
Speaking of very different music, we must address the fact that Tyler Hyde is the daughter of techno legend Karl Hyde of Underworld. Has his influence and experience been helpful in her chosen career? “What? Making twee indie pop music?” Hyde laughs.
She continues: “Techno hasn’t inspired this album; but I was lucky enough to grow up with a father who’s played guitar his whole life, and is a huge guitar collector. If it hadn’t been for that and my mother pushing me to do music lessons as a kid… I’ve been blessed with parents who made me do music in one way or another.”
“He’s a very supportive man,” adds Mark. “He texts me all the time to ask about guitars and stuff. He’s just an enthusiast, which is good to have around.”
Another supporter has been James Ford, superproducer and all-round good egg (who’s currently undergoing treatment for acute leukaemia). Ford’s excellent 2023 debut album The Hum was inspired by his dad’s Canterbury scene record collection and made in his Hackney loft, where he’s also entertained Beth Gibbons and Pet Shop Boys.
The only way May could imagine performing it was if everyone was playing recorder or clarinet. The recorder is cheaper and slightly easier to learn
Charlie Wayne
As a six-piece, BCNR naturally needed somewhere bigger, and opted for the pastoral Angelic studios in rural Northamptonshire. “It was very remote,” says Hyde. “We were kind of on an island – or at least it felt like that. But that’s how we like to record: we go somewhere and commit to the space. It seems counterproductive, for us anyway, to make a world that you’re putting onto vinyl, and have your personal worlds involved in that. You have to put a force field around it.”
That fostering of focus has enabled the group to do some extraordinary things, such as the Hyde’s Nancy Tries To Take The Night, an epic journey that starts out with plucked Spanish guitars, builds with vocal and clarinet, then bursts into a frenzy of Reichian ostinatos about halfway through.
How does a song as involved that come together? It turns out Nancy was the first song written for the new record, and helped set the tone. “The process was kind of isolated in a way,” says Hyde. “I had the picking pattern on guitar for the verses, and I had the chorus on piano. We had to take two movie sections and somehow bring them together.
“It reminded me of how we used to make music, with a more sensitive approach to writing. There was less direction to it… I don’t want to use the word ‘jam,’ because we didn’t jam.”
The bassist suffered in the process, right up until it was done. “I remember tearing my hair out,” she says. “Like, ‘Oh my God – I just don’t know how far to take this.’ We ended up going pretty maximalist on it, but it’s one of those songs that could’ve taken many different forms. I’d have been happy with a much more minimalist way. It’s about learning not to be precious about what comes out.”
Experimentation even led the band back to their childhoods to create a recorder chorus for the title track, with lyrics written by May Kershaw. “Most English kids have got a basic recorder understanding because we do that at school,” says Hyde.
“I didn’t get to do that,” interjects Mark, sounding slightly hurt. “I had to learn from scratch.”
“I skived my recorder lessons,” Wayne admits. “I got picked out at assembly and had to go back into recorder class, and I hated it so much.”
“That makes so much sense!” nods Hyde.
“The song kind of existed already,” Wayne explains, “May played it on the piano. When we came to arrange it in a BCNR way, she said the only way she could imagine performing it was if everyone was playing the recorder, or everyone was playing the clarinet. And the recorder is cheaper and probably slightly easier to learn!”
The song became a faithful document of everyone learning to play the woodwind instrument. “It starts off fairly simply and then gradually becomes more complex as the song expands, because we got better at the recorder as we went along.”
Indeed: what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.
