The last time Black Country, New Road released a studio album, in 2022, it was accompanied by a strange feeling. Their debut the previous year had reached No 4 in the UK charts, and Ants from Up There was an even greater breakthrough, the sound of the UK septet pulling confidently away from the serried ranks of sprechgesang-heavy alt-rock bands who proliferated in the late 2010s. But there was an elegiac feeling around its release: Black Country, New Road’s frontman, Isaac Wood, had announced his departure four days prior. The others had resolved to continue without him, but given how distinctive Wood’s declarative, ruminating vocals were, many thought the band’s future was uncertain at best.
That proved to be an underestimation. Instead of touring Ants from Up There, the remaining members stopped playing any of the Wood-fronted songs that had made them famous and wrote entirely new ones. “Look at what we did together,” ran the chorus of one of them, on a live album recorded at London’s Bush Hall in December 2022 – looking back with pride at the Wood era, and perhaps in disbelief at where they were going next.
On their new album Forever Howlong, they continue to be impressively industrious – none of the material from Live at Bush Hall has been studio-recorded for it – and able to turn Wood’s departure into an opportunity for rejuvenation. Some characteristic Black Country, New Road sounds remain, including the hypnotic, Steve Reich-y crosshatched string and woodwind figures, but – aside from some rocking-out moments here, most notably the single Happy Birthday – their sound has moved in a more gentle, bucolic direction, driven by trilling piano and acoustic guitar, flecked with banjo, mandolin and woodwind. On the title track, the listener is treated to the primary school assembly-evoking sound of Black Country, New Road’s members playing recorders en masse.
Wood’s role is now split between the affectless voices of Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery and May Kershaw. When the three harmonise together, as on Mary, it can sound like the Roches, albeit an anglicised, RP version. But Forever Howlong’s stop-start rhythms, tempo changes, fourth wall-breaking lyrics (“and now here comes the chorus”, “a song I made, yeah, it’s a song”) and episodic song structures most notably evoke the jazz-inflected, playful and very British “Canterbury scene” prog of Soft Machine, Caravan and Hatfield and the North, curiously an influence Wood mentioned as a possible future direction in a Guardian interview four years ago.
This approach suggests a certain detachment from prevalent musical trends. You really don’t get a lot of whimsical Englishness in 21st-century rock and pop, and there are definitely moments during Forever Howlong when you wonder whether that’s altogether a bad thing: For the Cold Country is a tale about a knight in armour who ends up flying a kite with his own ghost, and you need a fairly high tolerance for mannered eccentricity to get through it. But if song titles including Besties, Happy Birthday and Socks suggest Black Country, New Road have lost the twitchy, angsty edge so pronounced on Ants from Up There, something more subtle is actually going on: they strike an intriguing balance between winsome imagery and darker themes.
On Salem Sisters, what initially sounds like a description of a summer party, complete with barbecue, turns out to be an execution by burning; Two Horses’ picaresque voyage of discovery culminates in the titular horses being fatally mutilated; the subject of Mary steels themselves to seize the day, but is bullied into submission; Socks seems to be fraught with the very 2025 feeling of being emotionally overwhelmed by the constant uncertainty provoked by the news (“I’m doing fine, having a whale of a time, but the world could consume all the things that you knew”).
Occasionally, Forever Howlong can sound like Black Country, New Road are slightly overwhelmed themselves, as if they’re struggling to marshall the wilfully complex strands of their songwriting and arrangements, and the circuitous structures start to ramble on. But this happens far less often than you might expect thanks to the strength of their melodies. They frequently rise and fall with a noticeably show tune-like gait (as on Happy Birthday) and they’re usually luscious and captivating enough to carry you through the knottiest moments, including a section of Salem Sisters where the tempo changes with each line of vocals.
Long-term fans may still mourn the passing of Black Country, New Road v1.0, who seemed supremely confident and on the verge of the big time. There’s something exploratory about the sound of Forever Howlong and not every approach it tries works. But at its best, it’s surprising, captivating and unique: the work of a remarkably resilient band determined to take the most scenic route.
This week Alexis listened to
Wet Leg – Catch These Fists
Appropriately titled: for a band that could have proved a novelty one-off, this is an impressively pugilistic and potent return.
