Dismayed as some fans may be by the disparity between Black Country, New Road’s last two studio albums, Ants From Up There and Forever Howlong, the London-based six-piece offered both plenty of time and a record’s worth of new material to ease the transition. 2023’s Live at Bush Hall remains the rare live collection of songs with no studio equivalents, one that saw existing members take on lead vocals and helped spearhead, under the banner of unity, the group’s evolution following the departure of frontman Isaac Wood. With some of its songs coinciding with the Bush Hall era, Forever Howlong leverages the band’s fluidity with a heightened level of precision and strikes a subtler balance between sonic lightness and emotional intensity. With vocals, and largely songwriting, now split between Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Kershaw, Forever Howlong serendipitously, yet potently, coalesces around a female perspective, yet the experiences they relay reach far beyond these three women. It’s in the loneliest moments that you hear them band together, all playing out time.

1. Besties

Some fans were quick to describe this lead single as painfully (rather than playfully) twee, but with Mary Kershaw’s harpsichord intro and Lewis Evans’ burst of saxophone, ‘Besties’ quickly makes a sweeping case for this new era of BC,NR. Then it settles to reveal the charm of Georgia Ellery’s songwriting, already evident in her work with Jockstrap but stepping into the forefront for the first time in a BC,NR studio recording. As queer longing becomes less of an undercurrent and more like the point of the song, the cheeriness of ‘Besties’ comes off not just tongue-in-cheek but bittersweet. If only friendship and unrequited love could be reconciled like baroque instrumentation and TikTok references. 

2. The Big Spin

Though Kershaw brought this one in, it seems to spin out of the same groove as ‘Besties’, differentiated mostly by her personally idiosyncratic lyrics. “I think that the lemons might make a comeback this year” is the song’s big prediction, leaving no clue as to what Kershaw might make of the declaration. It’s what we don’t know about the humans who tend to them that makes us curious about these plants’ fate.

3. Socks

The band’s shapeshifting fluidity shines through on ‘Socks’, the album’s first six-minute song. Tyler Hyde’s arrangement throws off the record’s up-to-this-point straightforward groove, but drummer Charlie Wayne is up to the challenge. “How many things can one read ’til they feel they’re not afraid of it all?” Hyde ponders, before reveling in the fearlessness of the whole group operating as one. “No word or phrase/ Has the power to say what the tie is we share/ It’s far greater than rare, oh yeah/ In dark, there comes the light/ And we must try with all our might/ To keep this thing alive.” ‘Socks’ makes it sound technically daunting but ultimately worth the effort. 

4. Salem Sisters

Originally a song by Lewis Evans about a barbecue in summertime, ‘Salem Sisters’ arrives transformed – and fascinatingly ambiguous – from Tyler Hyde’s perspective. It’s breezy insofar as a breeze can make you feel trapped in an ice cave, and summery in the way that a barbecue can make you feel like you’re being burnt at the stake. Call it social anxiety. 

5. Two Horses

Georgia Ellery’s equestrian tale is completely fictional and refreshingly complete. From beginning to end, the narrator’s journey is straightforward – almost predictable – yet followed by Ellery’s bandmates with such attention that they all seem to contribute their own subtle interpretation. The lighthearted tone of ‘Two Horses’ only makes the brutal fate of its titular animals more pronounced, though you’re left wondering what they really stood for. 

6. Mary

Who said there’s no space for teen angst in this iteration of Black Country, New Road? The surprise is that it makes the group pull back instrumentally, with no drums, a mix of acoustic guitar, banjo, and accordion as its anchor, and a flute solo to guide it home. A song about bullying at an all-girls school, ‘Mary’ is suitably understated, unable to externalize the narrator’s turmoil: “She screams in the shower/ Lost all of her power/ Keep face/ She’ll leave no trace, not even in her home.” But the group female vocals, inspired by the Roches, trade perspectives as much as they frame her inner monologue as shared.  

7. Happy Birthday

Given how the Tyler Hyde-led song feeds off the energy of ‘Besties’, it’s interesting how they’ve been placed this far apart in the tracklist. But ‘Happy Birthday’, which was initially called ‘Kids’, seems to tear at the childhood innocence much of Forever Howlong is built upon, without exactly embracing cynicism: “She sat and sang the tale of youth/ ‘Cause children don’t know the meaning of truth.” For this group, the questions alone are scintillating. 

8. For the Cold Country

Lewis Evans has described this arrangement as “unwieldy and enormous,” but the two years they spent fleshing it out has turned it into the album’s most magnificent song – a testament to the band still willing to claw their teeth into a song to make the most difficult ones work. It starts a little guarded, cracking for the first time when Kershaw sings, “Oh, where’s the way.” Yet the pay-off is expansive: while many songs on Forever Howlong are about caving in – recoiling from fear or disappointment or shame – ‘For the Cold Country’ allows its protagonist, a knight who decides to shed off his armor, to proclaim, “I caved out.” The reason is one that seems to appeal to the group itself: “I think I’d like to be a little lighter.” 

9. Nancy Tries to Take the Night

Keeping their most ambitious and challenging songs for last, the band follows up ‘For the Cold Country’ with an equally impressive song that’s far more gut-wrenching and disoriented. Led by Hyde, ‘Nancy Tries to Take the Night’ plunges us into the world of Oliver Twist to combine experiences both generalized and specific to women in her own life. It’s a moral battle and a test of imagination, a plea echoed by more people than could possibly respond to it. 

10. Forever Howlong

A sense of playfulness peeks back out on the title track, which is sparser yet complex as it challenges the band’s members to combine their individual parts on the same instrument: the recorder. You may find yourselves wondering: Would Joanna Newsom come up with a line like, “The last video I watched told me the pH of my gut microbiome was certainly causing my blues”? Maybe not, but it certainly sounds like she might have sung it. 

11. Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me)

The closing track retains the album’s winsome spirit, but finally articulates the desperate feeling at its interpersonal core: “I’ve fallen in love with a fear I believe in,” Ellery sings, “I sink in my nails till I feel it inside.” Forever Howlong manages to paint the deepest conflicts over a lovely, delightful musical canvas – major chords where you’d least expect them – yet one can hardly trace a hint of irony throughout, just a resilient group weaving it to completion. Singing, and raising their voices, and humming but one syllable when no series of words can do the final feeling – not acceptance so much as dissolution – justice.