Style: post-punk, baroque pop (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Beatles, Black Midi, Keller Williams, Steve Reich, Love, The Beach Boys, The Smile
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 4 April 2025
Black Country, New Road’s last studio album Ants from Up There was something of a musical epiphany for me. After years of my music taste trending towards the obscure and impenetrable, I found myself a staunch death metal elitist. Draped in my camo cargo shorts and faded band tees, I’d turn my nose up at any album that didn’t have, by my estimation, the proper amount of blast beats, breakdowns, and harsh vocals. It didn’t matter how well composed or beautiful a piece of music was; all that mattered was whether the music fit into the increasingly narrow definition that I needed it to so as to appease my elitist nature. In all honesty, I think it was a sense of elitism that drove me to write here at The Progressive Subway in the first place, but there’s no quicker way to kill a metal elitist attitude than to expose it to truly great non-metal music. In talking to my fellow writers, I was quickly shown just how wrong I was about metal’s place on the musical throne. Slowly but surely, melody and levity crept their way back into my music taste, and it was then that I found Black Country, New Road.
I discovered Ants from Up There a few months after its release, and I was immediately enraptured by its delicacy. Isaac Wood’s vulnerable timbre, the two-pronged chamber folk/pop attack of violin and saxophone, and the post-punk laden guitar and bass riffs created a mixture entirely foreign to me, and I quaffed it down like a desert-bound traveler in an oasis. While tracks like “Concorde” and “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” merely got stuck in my head, longer cuts “Snow Globes” and “Basketball Shoes” imprinted themselves upon my musical DNA, like drops of blood in water, once released, inextricable. I was a fanatic, and like a fanatic, I researched the source of my fascination. As any BCNR fan now knows, I learned of how Isaac Wood left the band mere days before the album’s release, and thus my worshipping only grew more devout; after all, the best way to make something seem legendary is to ensure it can never be recreated.
Having never toured in support of their newest album, BCNR announced that they would not be looking for a new vocalist, and that vocal duties would instead be split amongst the band’s six other members. I was skeptical of this approach—after all, Isaac Wood, at least in my estimation, was the beating and bleeding heart that made Ants from Up There so visceral. But I’ll be the first to admit that BCNR truly surprised me with 2023’s Live at Bush Hall. Despite coming across more like a playlist than a cohesive album, with each track’s vocals being taken by a different member of the band, Live at Bush Hall showed that Black Country, New Road could in fact exist, at least in some form, without Isaac as frontman. Since then, two years have passed, and BCNR has been hard at work. This time a bona fide studio album was the result; its name is Forever Howlong.
Vocal and songwriting duties have been split between the band’s three female members Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Kershaw, and immediately Forever Howlong distinguishes itself from its forerunners. Where Ants from Up There featured a distinctly masculine perspective, not just in the sense of Isaac’s vocals but in his choice of lyrical content, and where Live at Bush Hall seemed to thrive on the juxtaposition between the masculine and feminine perspectives, Forever Howlong narrows in on the feminine. In tracks like “Mary” and “Nancy Tries to Take the Night,” we see our heroines struggle against the trappings of domesticity and rebel when the opportunities arise. But in tracks like “Two Horses” and “For the Cold Country,” we see our same1 heroines, struggling to get by on their own. This fuzziness of conviction can be found everywhere on the album, from the lyrics and instrumentals to the album’s overall flow.
Instrumentally, Forever Howlong continues to chart the depths of post-punky baroque pop that BCNR has plumbed across its discography. However, Forever Howlong differs from its predecessors primarily in its lack of set piece instrumental sections. The closest we ever get to such a moment is the drone work on “For the Cold Country” and the ostinato work on “Nancy Tries to Take the Night,” but even those moments feel as though they are in service to the vocals. In fact, Forever Howlong is more vocally driven than any other BCNR release. Tracks like “Socks” rely exclusively on vocals as propellant and slide dangerously close to stagnant as the vocals slip tastefully in and out of tune, while other cuts like the title track follow the vocals more literally with bits of diegetic silence.
Such a strong focus on driving vocals can only succeed when the production is top-notch, and Forever Howlong has that department more than covered. BCNR has never had any production issues, but this new album blows their previous output out of the water. Layers come and go like tissue paper and gossamer, yet in conjunction they become full and succulent. Even as the vocals come in at barely a whisper, there can be heard tinkling piano, noodling sax, and tasteful tom fills, each adding their own frisson-inducing texture. Like any great art pop, this is an album best enjoyed with your fullest attention as each note rings out crystal clear.
The only hangup I have with Forever Howlong is its flow. Each track leading up to the double whammy of “For the Cold Country” and “Nancy Tries to Take the Night” feels like a piece in a carefully constructed staircase of intensity that ultimately climaxes in glorious splendor, and then there’s two tracks that come after. On their own, the title track and “Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me)” are perfectly fine, both continuing the trend of tasteful and delicate art pop that defined the album’s front half, but when viewing them as part of Forever Howlong I can’t help but see them as outliers of an otherwise well defined rising trendline. The real issue here is that I don’t think a simple rearrangement of tracks would have fixed this; had the final two tracks instead been somewhere in the album’s front half, I’d probably instead be complaining that the album was a bit samey with the only major impacts occurring in its final few tracks, and simply removing tracks never feels like a satisfying solution in an already lean album. I understand that not all albums need to climax on their final track, but it is far and away my preference when it comes to album flow. At the end of the day though, this is a minor gripe, and maybe I’ll come to enjoy the two closing tracks with time.
The more I sit and listen to Forever Howlong, and the more I try to compare it to Ants from Up There, the more I realize what a fruitless endeavor that is. Where Live from Bush Hall seemed to be defined by the absence of Isaac Wood, Forever Howlong is its own invention, and in its delicate nooks and crannies, it forges a new identity for Black Country, New Road. As someone who once shut out entire genres in favor of brutality and extremity, it’s albums like these that make me glad I’ve changed my ways. While Forever Howlong may not reach the same mythical heights as Ants from Up There, it carves a new space entirely—one softer, stranger, and equally beautiful.
Recommended tracks: Two Horses, For the Cold Country, Nancy Tries to Take the Night
You may also like: Eunuchs, The Orchestra (For Now), Maruja
Final verdict: 8/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Ninja Tune – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Black Country, New Road is:
– Tyler Hyde (bass, lead vocals)
– Lewis Evans (saxophone, flute, backing vocals)
– Georgia Ellery (violin, mandolin, guitars, backing and lead vocals)
– May Kershaw (keyboards, piano, accordion, backing and lead vocals)
– Charlie Wayne (drums, percussion, banjo, backing vocals)
– Luke Mark (guitars, backing vocals)
- It’s unclear whether this album is conceptual. BCNR has always toed that line. ↩︎
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