Black Country, New Road and the Release of One of the 21st Century’s Best Albums
Black County, New Road | Creative Commons Image
(REVIEW) Frontman Isaac Wood stares at his guitar with a peculiar longing. “Basketball Shoes” rises and falls three times before it crashes to its ending at 13 minutes. With each rise, Wood breaks contact with his guitar for a moment as his lips rest a few inches from the mic. He starts quietly, his voice shaking with the solemn admittance of his own defeat. It feels that, at any moment, he may collapse in on himself. On the fourth build, he screams. His voice cracks as he raises his skull to the sky. He looks away from the mic and turns his back to the audience. The look of longing contorts to contempt as he shreds guitar strings with a beggar's despair. He’s pleading with it — proverbial screaming for it to take its role as the harsh bearer of pains. Every strum and writhe of the body further washes his bloody hands clean. For him, that guitar, this music, is the ultimate arbiter of truth. As he finishes his final line, Wood slowly kneels to the ground. The audience cheers, but his eyes are still glued to his hands that clutch the knit sweater against his frail chest.
The aforementioned scene is recalled from a live-streamed Covid concert on March 3, 2021 where Black Country, New Road played an early version of what would eventually become “Basketball Shoes.”
Music for British post-rock band Black Country, New Road isn’t as much a means to resolve emotion as it is a way to make it tangible — to pour it all out in front of you, to spill your guts for the sake of seeing them as they truly are, dark, disgusting, yet natural.
In 2021, BC,NR exploded onto the scene. Their debut studio album For the First Time revealed a band so sonically unique and cohesive that it blew the British underground scene out of the water. With tenor sax solos interrupting triumphant post-punk bridges, lavish lead key lines fluttering under soft violin strings and some of the best songwriting of the past decade, they were making their mark in the budding reemergence of post-rock.
Although For the First Time is an astonishing debut, it is exactly that. It feels like an outburst onto the scene — a cry to be heard. Each song has a certain eagerness to it. It was frantic and messy, but that was part of the charm. However, on February 4, 2022, three days after Wood announced that he will be leaving the band, BC,NR released one of my favorite records of the 21st century.
Ants from Up There is a triumphant 58-minute journey of painstakingly raw and untethered emotion. In it, every piece of the band falls perfectly and graciously into place. From moment to moment, track to track, BC,NR pulls you further and further into their bleak yet hopeful perspective. In many ways, it is a love letter to music, a masterclass in how perfect composition creates for moments of inexplicably profound beauty. Whereas For The First Time was full of an adolescent passion, Ants is an entirely calculated study of catharsis. It’s an emotional outburst, a way to make tangible all the insoluble abstract emotions that are so incredibly suffocating.
Wood stands in the center of it all with his once-in-a-lifetime performance. He pours his entire soul into every single line. At times, it feels as though you can hear his vocal cords ripping from the strain of pure passionate rage. His performance is coupled with some of the best songwriting of recent years.
Take for instance the chorus from “Concorde,” the album’s metaphorical centerpiece: “And you, like Concorde / I came, a gentle hill racer / I was breathless upon every mountain / just to look for your light // But, for less than a moment / We’d share the same sky / and Isaac will suffer / Concorde will fly.”
Whether it be the terrifying humor of upper-class pretension in London or the crushing realization that love doesn’t always stay, the stark bullet of delivery that cuts through the listener's soul is placed in an immersion of a metaphorical moment followed by a harsh pull back to reality. In doing so, the listener is forced to come to terms with what the entire album is trying to convince itself: it’s okay that good things do not always stay.
It is then, perhaps fitting that Wood announced his departure from the band in a sobering letter three days before the album's release:“Hello everyone, I have bad news which is that I have been feeling sad and afraid too. And I have tried to make this not true, but it is the kind of sad and afraid that makes it hard to play guitar and sing at the same time. . . I have been feeling not so great and it means from now I won't be a member of the group anymore.”
Following the announcement, the band canceled their North American tour of the album. Though Isaac will no longer be a part of Black Country, New Road, his note embodies everything that the band stands for. Earnestness — a certain and distinct truth to one’s self — is of utmost importance when you’re crying out, not to be heard, but to convince yourself that there is a value in telling the void that light’s absence doesn’t always have to be so dark.
Though I’m deeply saddened by his departure, I’m coming to terms with beautiful things not always lasting.