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Exclusive interview: Black Country, New Road talks about new album
London’s genre-smashing seven-piece band Black Country, New Road talks to The Jakarta Post about its musical evolution.
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Self-awareness: Black Country, New Road's lyrics contain pop culture references and lines about being British. (Courtesy of Black Country, New Road) (Band management/Courtesy of Black Country, New Road)
L
em>Less than a year after releasing its critically acclaimed first album, London’s genre-smashing seven-piece band Black Country, New Road talks to The Jakarta Post about its musical evolution on an upcoming second album and the importance of not always going for the obvious.
For a group that is barely four years old, the London-based seven-piece Black Country, New Road has really taken the music world by storm. The band’s debut album For the First Time, released in February, landed the band plenty of critical acclaim in a short period of time, thanks to its unique, genre-smashing style that encompasses post-punk, jazz, spoken word, math-rock and even klezmer (traditional Jewish) music. The album was nominated for a Mercury Prize and the popular British music magazine Mojo hailed Black Country, New Road as “Britain’s new best band”.
A British brewery even decided to call a new sour ale “I Am Locked Away in a High-Tech, Wraparound, Translucent, Blue-Tinted Fortress”, which happens to be lyrics from the band’s pre-album version of the song “Sunglasses”, a sub 10-minute jazzy post-punk odyssey filled with spoken words that reads like singer Isaac Wood’s stream of consciousness about, well, a lot of things, from envisioning a bizarre British household scenario “Mother is juicing watermelons on the breakfast island / In the downstairs second living room’s TV area / I become her father / And complain of mediocre theatre in the daytime and ice in single malt whiskey at night,” to being a cool, “invisible” guy when wearing a pair of sunglasses: “I am invincible in these sunglasses / I am the Fonz’ I am the Jack of Hearts / I am looking at you and you cannot / Tell I am more than the sum of my parts.”
Sung in a monotone low voice, reminiscent of Nick Cave, the lyrics are erratic and laced with tons of pop culture references with musical icons Kanye West, Richard Hell and Scott Walker all being mentioned in the song.
Consisting of musicians still in their early 20s, the band also makes lyrical references to being British, whether it’s in tongue-in-cheek (“And things just aren’t built like they used to be
/ The absolute pinnacle of British engineering” from “Sunglasses”) or some hilarious meta line possibly from the band’s own experience (“Why don’t you sing with an English accent? / Well, I guess it’s too late to change it now” from “Athens, France”).
No matter how random the lyrics may seem, Black Country, New Road seems like a band that is fully aware of every word choice it makes. After all, it self-mockingly called itself “the world’s second-best Slint tribute act” in one of its own songs—as it is often compared to the seminal 1980s American math-rock act.
