Black Country, New Road: 'We're Quite Easily Bored By Our Own Music, We Need To Change It Constantly'

Black Country, New Road are a rare beast. There has been a level of intrigue around the London seven-piece right from their first single Athens, France in 2019, despite there being next to no information available on the outfit unless you spent a good chunk of time in Brixton - where their live shows were already becoming a must-see.

Pilfering sounds from free jazz, post-punk, klezmer, and a few members' classical training, their dissonant sound is run through with Kanye references, disappointing sexual encounters and sprechgesang non-sequiturs from unreliable narrators.

The results are chaotic and transfixing, earning them the title of 'best band in the world' from The Quietus and a deal with independent record label Ninja Tune. Now their debut album For The First Time is dropping, to incredible reviews, and the band have already changed tack.

"We finished recording [For The First Time] in March, and so we've had a lot of time in this pandemic, to create new ideas and focus on a new sound," says bassist Tyler Hyde. "It’s different."

"The songs feel quite old, now," says sax player Lewis Evans. "But we've been kind of redesigning them, so that they fit in with our tastes at the moment. I mean, we're quite easily bored by our own music, so we need to change it constantly.

"So we're a bit - we've got a new inspiration for the tracks, and especially when we went in to record it as well, we did it really differently to how we've been playing it live. So, it feels a lot better for us than it would have been if we'd have just played it as we had been doing live before we recorded the album in March."

The most obvious changes are in the two singles that first caught the band so much attention, Athens, France and Sunglasses. Aside from substantial rewrites to the former’s lyrics, singer Isaac Wood’s strung out, lascivious groans and whimpers are gone, while musically the song feels softer, more rueful, delivered with less of a sneer. The difference is subtle but significant, and though the bearing has only changed by degrees the final destination is miles from the original.

"We wanted to change it up a lot," says Evans. "Because like I said, we've gotten a bit bored of the way we were playing it before. And it had to be different, really. So we changed it up. For that reason, and also because we've matured quite a bit as a band, we didn't want to be quite as angsty. Because maybe we weren't really feeling that anymore. So we made it quite a bit more chill, really.

"And then, we also learned how to play quietly as well, which I think was a revelation for us. So we decided to play quietly at times rather than just [get rid] of some instruments in the mix, which is kind of the way to cheat playing quietly. We've actually all started playing quietly together. I think we just changed a lot, musically and as people, so that made us want to change the version and it didn't, wouldn’t have felt true to ourselves if we'd had released it and played it how we did on the original single."

As the pair say, they haven’t been static in the year since recording For The First Time either, and despite the developments the band made in the process of creating this album, they’re very clear that it is still the product of 'phase one' for BCNR. Hyde says that we’ve already seen hints to their next step in their live sets, as well as relatively tranquil final album single Track X. It feels bold to mess with a winning formula before it’s even really seen a wider release, but to BCNR it’s just pragmatic.

"I mean, the main people we have in mind when we're making music is ourselves," says Hyde, "not to sound self-centred [laughs], or arrogant. Just that everything that we've ever made is to kind of please one another, and please ourselves, and it's just a bonus and a big honour that people have liked it."

There’s a growing wave of UK bands feeling out the boundaries of guitar music without much concern for what everyone else is doing. When asked what’s given rise to this trend both are emphatic that it is, at least in part, a direct influence of The Windmill in Brixton.

"It’s a very unique venue, in the UK," says Hyde, "that has created this platform for kind of anyone really, not just guitar bands, but anyone to come in and do their thing. It's a very open environment. And because of The Windmill, bands like us, bands like Squid, black midi, have been able to begin their musical career."

Lewis adds that The Windmill isn’t just somewhere people can get their first shows, a large part of the venue’s influence is its willingness to actually hand young bands the reins. 

"That’s it," says Hyde, "from quite a young age and quite early on, you can kind of have some curatorial input into nights that happened there… I think The Windmill is one of the key stepping stone venues in London."

Unfortunately, like many iconic Australian venues, The Windmill has been through the wringer during COVID - acts like Shame, Goat Girl, Foley Group and more speaking out on how devastating its loss would be for UK music.

"Massively," says Evans. "That there's a whole new generation of people who are coming through right now, who will be coming through in five to ten years, and even further in the future, that if The Windmill is closed, won't get the opportunity to do what we've been able to do. And it is largely thanks to that platform that we have the platform we have today. So it is, it would be devastating if it were to have to close."

BCNR even enlisted friends black midi to play a live-streamed show at the venue, the bands performing Christmas songs together as black midi, New Road and donating their ticket and merch sales to the venue.

"That was a wicked experience," says Evans. "We did the same last year because I had a school project for uni. You had to put on a gig and I was like, 'how can I put in the least effort? And still do quite well?’ And so I thought I'll see if black midi want to do a show with us, 'cause they sell tickets like hotcakes."

The pandemic has also affected the outfit in terms of touring, dates initially booked for late 2020 pushed first to February and March and now all the way to September and October. This is a familiar hurdle for artists now, but it presents a unique problem for bands like BCNR, in that the Brexit UK/EU transition period finally closed at the start of the year.

"It’s gonna be hard," says Evans "We don't have as much of a problem with it. Because we have financial backing now that we've got signed. So it's not us that gets punished by that as much as it is younger bands. Bands that haven't been formed as early as we'd formed and that's the only difference. 

"Nothing to do with music, nothing to do with how experienced we are. It's literally just to do with how early they formed and how early they started putting out music. So, it's not us that are so much affected by it, but it's gonna hit, especially, I mean, UK and EU artists a lot."

Close to 300,000 people signed a petition to implement “Europe-wide visa-free work permit for touring professionals and artists” in January after it came to light the UK had rejected a similar offer from the EU. Parliament are set to debate the petition next week, but as it stands touring acts will have to apply for work permits in every country they visit, something that will be hugely expensive and time-consuming.

"You can get you can get a train to France in two hours from here," says Evans. "From my doorstep, I could be in France in just over two hours. And that, the fact that that might cost too much money for certain people to go over there play music, play their music for people in a different country, it's just so dumb. It's really dumb."

"And how much of British music has been influenced by communication with European artists?" asks Hyde. "And how much it has changed because of that, and how that change is just gonna stop happening for a period of time. Because of this.

"[It’s] totally selfish and it just feels so, not representative of a majority of people that are from the UK. But somehow this is happening. It's just totally bizarre. And to think of somewhere like London as well, how multicultural it is. And to think that so many of the people that live here have been told that they have to go home, or they're excluded."

For The First Time is out now.