Having already changed frontman once when they formed out of previous band Nervous Conditions, UK indie troupe Black Country, New Road have regrouped again after Isaac Wood left to focus on his mental health in 2022. Given how characterful Wood was as a vocalist – airy but wounded, cynical but romantic – this is no small change, but on this live album, the six-piece prove how magically malleable they are.
When they toured in 2022, rather than perform their acclaimed first two albums – both UK Top 5 hits – without him, they wrote all-new material, which this album captures across three nights at London’s Bush Hall.
The mood is valedictory but upbeat, whether in songs that are surely about Wood – Up Song features the chorus “Look at what we did together / BCNR, friends forever!” – or those about romantic breakups (which inevitably feel like farewells to their bandmate). “We made something to be proud of,” sings saxophonist Lewis Evans on The Wrong Trousers, a song whose upward-striding cadences are weirdly reminiscent of My Way.
Compared with Wood’s surrealist encounters, the lyrics are now more plainspoken, though two songs sung by May Kershaw carry us off into fantasy: Turbines/Pigs is a witchy quest spread across a 10-minute piano waltz, and The Boy is a three-chapter story about woodland animals. Across the Pond Friend and Dancers will soon be hearty singalongs, the latter the best of five excellent songs led by Tyler Hyde, who travels so much emotional terrain with her voice: it trembles with vibrato and is even cowed at times, yet remains sure-footed and agile. Releasing this material as a live album is a virtue – the audience’s roar after the absurdly pretty Turbines/Pigs has a thrilling note of disbelief.
Plenty of Wood-era elements remain, too: the repeating Reich-style woodwind motifs, the sense of musical theatre, and the thrilling tightness and chops of this odd little chamber orchestra. You could ascribe indie-world comparisons – the pomp and ragged optimism of early Arcade Fire, the drama of recent Mitski, the stately mysticism of Joanna Newsom – but none of them would really capture an evolving and genuinely one-off band.