It took a while, but we’re calling it now: with the release of Black Country, New Road’s ‘For the first time’ we’ve come exactly, precisely to the opposite edge of the indie galaxy.
Whilst this might look like a bold claim, the evidence has been gathering for about eighteen months. From about that far back new bands like Squid, Dry Cleaning and black midi started to emerge, the only common thread that united them their differences and the oblique relationships they had with guitar rock. After listening to them though, suddenly Chelsea Dagger felt like a long, long time ago.
Black Country, New Road have, somewhat ridiculously, also been tagged as ‘the most divisive band in Britain’ (Question mark), a hyperbolism which speaks more to excitable headline writers than anybody who’s heard their music.
It’s true that the seven-piece from Cambridge are about challenging the perceptions of what regular form and structures can be, but like the fellow experimentalists they’re frequently compared with – most regularly feted 90’s autodidacts Slint – this post-everything construct is of itself still old news.
What can be seen is a band as a developing organism. Two of the tracks that make up ‘For the first time’s half dozen are reworkings of their rapturously welcomed singles Athens, France and Sunglasses, a decision it was felt became essential after hearing them grow and change when being aired repeatedly on tour; it’s possible that the next time anyone experiences them in person they may be perplexingly different again.
Neither are as many slaves to the avant-garde as some would have you believe; the former mixes moods and tempos, with singer/speaker Isaac Wood allowing the words to spill out like a conversation at a bus stop, while the latter is a near ten-minute cycle that could’ve been partially chiseled from Spiderland; in one phase brooding, in the next a free-jazz skronk-a-thon that threatens to grind to a complete halt.
Almost free associating, Wood espouses a suitably paranoid lyrical frame to match the group’s bony artifact: “I become her father/And complain of mediocre theatre in the daytime/And ice in single malt whiskey at night/Of rising skirt hems and lowering IQs.”
Like a puzzle, investigation reveals these however as only fragmental parts of a startlingly ambitious canvas. Beginning with the self-evidently titled opener Instrumental, Black Country, New Road’s many contrasting facets are gradually brought into play, the insistent middle Eastern sounding riff eventually mutating into a kind of weird alt-Bond theme tune.
On Science Fair, any patterns are less distinct, as if Wood is performing as opposed to working solely as a musician; consumers of more traditional music may well find it’s here that the abrasive surfaces challenge them most.
What’s inescapable with more determined listening is the presence of a highly filmic residue, one that in the absence of more orthodox structure makes for easier connection. Closer Opus is a drama of despair that seeks to break the bonds of restraint, like the final scene from an unmade Godfather movie where it rains guilt and bullets at some infamous wedding.
Track X, they claim, is by contrast a glimpse at the different scope of their forthcoming material, an Arthur Russell inspired pastoral overlap that allows itself willingly to be embraced.
There is an increasing fear that cultural discourse is being stymied as art, entertainment and commercialism become ever symbiotic. That bands like Black Country, New Road are able to make records like ‘For the first time’ is a rebuttal to that; there’s nothing groundbreaking about their eagerness to experiment other than the sometimes torrid execution.
Perhaps, as seems likely based on this evidence, their true calling still awaits.
