"I bury the axe here...."
"Chaos Space Marine" by the UK cataclysmic atom smashing hybrid folk punk outfit Black Country, New Road is so sonically rich and different and curious that you can't help but smile but you might be smiling with an open mouth, a slightly disturbing effect of your jaw dropping to the floor (so to speak). I think it might be a ridiculous exercise to exactly describe "Chaos Space Marine" but I think it would be instructive to say that lead singer Isaac Wood does remind me a bit of an amalgam of Mike Patton and Isaac Brock and that Black Country, New Roads' artful pastiche novel sound feels like a car crashing together of Man, Man, Mike Patton's Mondo Cane, Siobhan Wilson, Oingo Boingo splashed with tinges of Russian folk music.
My description might scare you or entice you and while it is, obviously flawed, "Chaos Space Marine" is stunningly different than most of what you will find out on the musical landscape and Isaac Wood's vocal performance (to me) has the countenance of a broken storyteller and I love that. Black Country, New Road might just be my latest guilty pleasure, an exercise in absurdist psychedelic philosophy put to song. It is from there upcoming sophomore album, “Ants From Up There”, dropping on February 4th, 2022 on Ninja Tune and is a follow up to their award winning debut album, "For the First Time".
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/BlackCountryNewRoad
https://twitter.com/BCNRband
https://blackcountrynewroad.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/blackcountrynewroad/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLTa27Tr5QqHx9G53H8jdFQ
https://soundcloud.com/blackcountrynewroad
“We were really, really hyped making this record,” says Lewis Evans of Black Country, New Road. “We all love every single moment of this album.”
Most bands, having been at the centre of a whirlwind of hype and critical acclaim, would be happy to stick to a winning formula for repeat success but creative stagnation is of zero interest to BC,NR who have swiftly returned with a follow album that takes yet another bold and innovative musical leap.
Their debut, For the first time, is a 2021 Album of the Year, receiving ecstatic reviews and picking up a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize, and the band have harnessed the momentum from that record and run full pelt into their second. On their debut album, the band (Evans, May Kershaw, Charlie Wayne, Luke Mark, Isaac Wood, Tyler Hyde and Georgia Ellery) melded klezmer, post-rock, indie and an often intense spoken word delivery. On Ants From Up There they have expanded on this unique concoction to create a singular sonic middle ground that traverses classical minimalism, indie-folk, pop, alt rock and a distinct tone that is already unique to the band.
Given the incredible acclaim for the band’s debut some second album jitters would be forgiven, or perhaps expected, but that’s not the case here, such is the laser focus on forward momentum. “I understand how that may be for some bands,” says Evans. “You get all of this buzz around you and if you still haven't come up with your new sound, you can really start to pander to what you think people want and that’s not always good. I think if we did that people would want a record that sounded even more like Slint.”
To make this bold, expressive and expansive follow-up the band retreated to the Isle of Wight for a three-week stay. The recording was done with producer Sergio Maschetzko, who is also the head sound engineer at London venue the Lexington, along with engineer David Granshaw. “They were both completely fundamental to how it ended up sounding,” says Wood, with Evans adding: “We’re quite a difficult band to record because we have very high standards and expectations of our own playing. We have a very particular sound in our head of what we want to sound like so it's really difficult for us to decide when the take is the take. It was really helpful to have Serge there as a witness to it all - I think if we didn't have him in there we'd probably have the most perfect takes but that were lacking energy.”
A sense of universal celebration is clearly taking place within the band and this feeling is also mirrored in the intention of the album - to be something of a unifier. “We are slowly trying to make our music really accessible,” says Evans. “You don't need to make weird sounding music to make weird music. There's not much in alternative music that is digestible and accessible while still being quite strange. Whereas you get a lot of that in pop music, a lot of artists make really weird music when you pick it apart but it still just sounds like perfect pop. We really liked the idea of doing that.”
Making music that is more accessible while retaining an innovative approach is something that has come from an enhanced sense of ease in the band. “The first time you do the album thing you're very wary,” says Wood. “We didn't get whisked up in it all by getting super excited, we kind of did the opposite: we were very careful and cautious. Learning from that experience, those things that you're really stressed about don't really matter too much. It's more of a comfort now, there's less tension because each specific decision means, in a way, less to us. We're less picky about shit. That's allowed us to be more comfortable and to just make music.”
The result is an album that is cohesive and very much a full body of work. “One of the first decisions we made about the album was that it was going to have a bit more of a musical through line,” says Evans. “Something that makes it feel like more of an album.” A repeating musical motif that bookends the album from “Intro” to the closing “Basketball Shoes” plays a key role in creating the glue that holds the record together. “It’s the main basis to “Basketball Shoes” and that was written before the rest of the album,” offers Evans. “We thought it was a great theme and we really like it when that happens in music. There's a Shostakovich piece where there's a theme that occurs over a lot of the different movements and another very different example is “What's Going On” by Marvin Gaye, where you've got that through line theme and I love that on albums.”
Lyrically, however, there’s less of a distinct theme, with Wood piecing together a lot from fragmented bits of writing and keeping hold of a lot of placeholder lyrics. “The themes of the lyrics kind of move with the themes of the music,” he says. “Trying to access something slightly more universal while still being interesting. It's a different time, a different place, a different world and the lyrics probably reflect that. They're quite different from the first record, but there's a pretty consistent through line.”
Much like musical motifs appear and reappear, so do snippets of Wood’s lyrics, from digging oneself into a hole, to a character in possession of “Billie Eilish style” to themes of escape, travel and separation via everything from Concorde to Starships. “When you're in a period of songwriting you're quite often trying to write the same song and you end up writing it like six or seven times,” explains Wood. “They then spread out but they do sort of come from the same place. It's like trying to accomplish the same thing over and over again and so the songs end up with themes.”
“Ants From Up There” manages to strike a skilful balance between feeling like a bold stylistic overhaul of what came before, as well as a natural progression. It’s also an album that comes loaded with a deep-rooted conviction in the end result. “We were just so hyped the whole time,” says Hyde. “It was such a pleasure to make. I've kind of accepted that this might be the best thing that I'm ever part of for the rest of my life. And that's fine.”
Much like musical motifs appear and reappear, so do snippets of Wood’s lyrics, from digging oneself into a hole, to a character in possession of “Billie Eilish style” to themes of escape, travel and separation via everything from Concorde to Starships. “When you're in a period of songwriting you're quite often trying to write the same song and you end up writing it like six or seven times,” explains Wood. “They then spread out but they do sort of come from the same place. It's like trying to accomplish the same thing over and over again and so the songs end up with themes.”
“Ants From Up There” manages to strike a skilful balance between feeling like a bold stylistic overhaul of what came before, as well as a natural progression. It’s also an album that comes loaded with a deep-rooted conviction in the end result. “We were just so hyped the whole time,” says Hyde. “It was such a pleasure to make. I've kind of accepted that this might be the best thing that I'm ever part of for the rest of my life. And that's fine.”
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Black Country, New Road, Post-Punk, Psychedelic / Freak Folk, "Chaos Space Marine" , forthcoming 2nd album, "Ants From Up There", divergent, spastic, art rock,
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