Black Country, New Road mark their studio return with triumphant new album ‘Forever Howlong’

Recommended tracks: “For the Cold Country,” “Besties,” “Salem Sisters”
Similar artists: Geordie Greep, black midi, Car Seat Headrest

Having settled in as a six-piece through recording and touring only new live material from Live at Bush Hall, the ever-evolving Black Country, New Road return with their first studio album since the 2022 critically acclaimed release of Ants From Up There. The band continues to embrace change with open arms, once again bringing an idiosyncratic album to the table with the signature sound and stellar musicianship we have come to expect of them, even with the tweaked lineup.

The 2022 departure of lead singer and guitarist Isaac Wood left a lot of question marks for the band. Uncertainty around vocals and songwriting duties as well as the direction of the band as a whole has led to a lot of experimentation, allowing for the band’s adaptability, musical skill, and tight knit cohesion to shine through. Ultimately, the singing and songwriting on Forever Howlong has fallen on the shoulders of Georgia Ellery, Tyler Hyde, and May Kershaw. The three have collaborated beautifully in this new era for BC,NR, building off of each other’s writing and gaining a confidence that permeates throughout the album both lyrically and sonically. Ellery says on the new lyricists:

“It created a real through line for the album, having three girls singing… It’s definitely very different to Ants From Up There, because of the female perspective-and the music we’ve made also compliments that.”

The opening tracks “Besties” and “The Big Spin” (written by Ellery and Kershaw, respectively) are the perfect example of this reciprocal relationship, the former being written as a kind of response track. With similar structures yet distinct voices, both invoke a decidedly lighthearted tone to start off the album, bringing strong elements of chamber pop with Lewis Evan’s saxophone floating along with singular whimsy.

Slow, stripped down (if BC,NR can be stripped down) grooviness is a surprising mainstay on the whole of Forever Howlong. Acoustic accompaniment is a constant on the new album, appearing heavily throughout most of the tracks. In “Two Horses,” dual acoustic guitars provide a slow, folky backing as well as a frantically measured strumming, creating an adventurous Americana feel to an Ellery-recited character-driven tune which conjures images of a classic Western movie poster. Going in a new aural direction, experimental progressive noise jazz rounds out the six-and-a-half-minute track.

Like Ellery said, the connecting piece of this album is the three singer-songwriters finding their voices, especially when all three combine on a slow brooding track like “Mary.” Forever Howlong sees Black Country, New Road playing with a completely different sound and set of themes. With the resolution of Wood’s departure and the completion of his cycle, the band has split from the spirit of the previous album’s overtly emotionally raw post-rock to create tracks with a fuzzy exterior and underlying melancholy like a softly sad Wes Anderson movie. Charging against self-deprecation and self-pity, “Happy Birthday” preaches “Cheer up child / The world don’t owe you a thing” and “Many people would give an arm and a limb / To live where you live.”

A far cry from Kanye references and the modern ironic quips on earlier albums, the band maintains its charm and wit marvelously with smart lyric play. Like in “Socks,” Hyde matches hard rhyming phrases “In joke there comes the truth / I am not blinded by my youth” or Ellery on “Besties” throwing in, “I’m a walking TikTok trend /But the colour runs out in the end.” I can’t forget the line in the title track, “The last video I watched told me the pH of my gut microbiome was certainly causing my blues,” which reminds me the most of Wood’s writing—something I’ve come to associate with BC,NR.

With the shift in the band and all of the changes they’ve endured, it’s not surprising that the standout track for me is a BC,NR trademark: the long winding epic that is “For the Cold Country.” Using a poignant metaphor of a fleeing knight closing himself off from the world in a cave, Kershaw reflects on the struggles and values of shared intimacy along with the memories that we hold onto throughout the journey. The May Kershaw masterpiece is composed of multiple different musical and flow switch-ups. Opening with slow chamber-esque harmonics and acoustic guitar, the song explodes into a quick tempo singing that sees a paragraph of lines blur together into lyrical poetic ecstasy—only to break and slow down again. The volatile, screeching finish reaches a fever pitch before circling back to where the track started, ending tenderly on, “The Sun’s gone home now / But our hands reach / Clammed together.”

Thematically, the album bounces around, not necessarily having the prescience of a full concept album. You can tell that this is another step for the band of close-knit friends as the potential for the new lineup has opened up plenty doors that, up until this point, have been largely unexplored. Female friendship and tentatively navigating anxiety, youth, intimacy, and relationships in the modern age are just some of the themes touched on. The writing has a wide scope and creates singular narratives packaged in their own songs, all while maintaining a strong sense of unity.

Black Country, New Road are just beginning to spread their wings of possibility as a new fully symbiotic, cohesive, collaborative entity. The album is a testament of BC,NR’s friendship, tenacity, and adaptability. Forever Howlong has the fingerprints of all six band members plastered all over it, there’s no doubt about that. The group is clearly just beginning to find a feel for the newly discovered multiple perspectives, finding music to match their voices, and generally having fun while figuring out what they are capable of. Having separated their releases with such rigidity before promptly moving onto the next chapter, Forever Howlong is another massive step into uncharted territory for one of the most singular and musically expansive indie bands of the last decade.

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