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.

Speaking exclusively to The Jakarta Post via Zoom on Oct. 25, saxophonist Lewis Evans and bassist Tyler Hyde said the band’s constant awareness of pop culture and being British was inevitable.

“Anyone that has access to social media is surrounded by pop culture, so it would seem a bit weird not to write lyrics involving pop culture given that it’s everyday life,” Evans said. “And living in the United Kingdom, you’re constantly reminded, whether good or bad, that you’re in the UK. So much news going on at the moment and it’s an insanely polarized society in the UK, and it’s gonna go down in history for sure.”

Colors: Their upcoming second album, 'Ants From Up There', released in February 2022, is more 'colorful' and less anxious compared to the band's darker, tense debut effort. (Courtesy of Black Country, New Road) (Band management/Courtesy of Black Country, New Road)

However, Hyde quickly added that the band was not expressing its political opinion through its lyrics.

“It’s not opinion-based at all; it’s regurgitating information that has been thrown at you and just throwing it out again in the form of music,” Hyde said.

A new wave of British guitar music

For the past few years, a legendary pub in Braxton, London, called The Windmill has been a hub for young musicians to perform and hone their craft. Aside from Black Country, New Road, notable groups such as Squid and Black Midi also started their careers at the venue. In December 2020, Black Country, New Road and Black Midi joined forces on a live-streamed gig where they performed Mariah Carey and Led Zeppelin covers under the appropriately named Black Midi, New Road to raise funds for The Windmill, as it was at risk of being closed permanently (it didn’t).

“Most of us came through that venue. It was fundamental for a lot of us getting on our feet and finding our place in what is quite a brutal world to get into,” Hyde said. ”It was the starting ground where a lot of us met and we’d have nights out and go see people there; it was a community.

“We’re not so much there these days because you play there for a few years and then you play bigger gigs, but it’s still important and will always play a big place in all of our hearts."

While musically all those bands don’t necessarily sound alike, they all seem to breathe new life into guitar-based rock music by taking risks in mixing up different styles and injecting a sense of exuberance and unpredictability.

“We never really stopped anything for being too poppy I think, but we have tried not to make the most obvious decisions [when it comes to songwriting],” Evans said. “It doesn’t always end up happening, but there’s a discourse about it.”

Hyde added that having a balanced approach of taking the obvious and not-so-obvious routes was important to the band.

“It’s a good thing to occasionally do the obvious thing, to give in to your ear and let the natural thing happen, otherwise, it’s pretentious, annoying and not fun,” Hyde said. “But it’s important not to do that all the time, otherwise it becomes boring.”

Best: London-based band Black Country, New Road, mostly in their early 20s, has been deemed as 'Britain's best new band' thanks to their unique genre-smashing style that pushes forward guitar-based rock music. (Courtesy of Black Country, New Road) (Band management/Courtesy of Black Country, New Road)

One of the things that made the band unique was the inclusion of klezmer, a type of Jewish folk music commonly played at weddings, parties and bar mitzvahs. Thanks to a large thriving Jewish community in London, klezmer music can be easily found in certain areas of the city. While no one in the band is Jewish, Georgia Ellery, the band’s violinist, along with Lewis Evans started playing classical music at a young age. Georgia also has been playing in a klezmer band called Happy Beigel Klezmer Orkester for a while now.

“A lot of my writing, especially in the first album, really has that klezmer sound because improvisationally, it felt like my voice at the time,” Evans conceded. “It’s one of the many tools used in the album; we got a bit of that klezmer rhythm used throughout the album.”

‘Colorful’ second album

Not even a year after the first album, on Oct. 14, the band announced its upcoming second album Ants From Up There, to be released in February 2022 while also dropping the first single off it titled “Chaos Space Marine".

While it retains the band’s musical agility and capriciousness, “Chaos Space Marine” sounds surprisingly playful and fun, with its rhythmic piano and frenetic horn blasts, a departure from the first album’s dark and intense atmosphere. And it clocks only at three minutes and 38 seconds, making it the shortest song the band has ever released so far (the average song length of the first album is six to seven minutes).

“At the beginning of the recording session, we [intended] to write some three-minute bangers, but that first recording ended up being 12 minute-long,” Hyde said, chuckling. “Maybe it’s a problem of having a seven-piece band; there are too many ideas, it’s hard.”

The second single off the new album, “Bread Song,” released on Nov. 11, is an evocative, minimalist slow-burner that rewards those with patience.

“It is a much more rich and colorful album, I’d say,” Evans said. “It doesn’t sound as anxious and is musically more beautiful sounding. The first one doesn’t want to be beautiful on purpose.”

If the first album was Black Country, New Road trying to find its feet, the second album is a truer reflection of who the band is and how it always was, according to Hyde.

“The second album feels more like a debut album, it’s a better representation of us and who we are,” she said.