LISTENING TO - For The First Time by Black Country, New Road

For The First Time - Cambridge based band Black Country, New Road's debut album emerged during the last lockdown garnering a huge amount of positive praise and hype. Mostly of 'the best new band in the world' variety, not that helpful for any band, let alone a seven piece still finding its feet. One can only hope they maintain as firm a grip on their assured sound and compositional style as is evidenced on this album. It opens with Instrumental, which is a very jaunty and upbeat track, which seriously misleads you about what will be following it. Some of this album can be a lot more unhinged and discomforting than this.

Whatever their main singer and lyricist Issac Wood is channelling, it is coming at you from a particularly obtuse angle. Whilst you may not always be able too follow the angular poeticism of his lyrical drift, you can feel what he means.  Fraught with all types of social awkwardness and angst, the world and him seem out if sync. His solipsistic preoccupation and the music behind it all do strangely fall together into a mighty and often moving force. His vocal emoting having the quality of a cracked vessel, that at any moment might completely fall apart

The music lives in its own odd little world. A realm where a klezmer style knees up can dissolve into a mournful guitar or song phrase. Move from a nostalgic feeling for an optimistic world built in the past, to a huge racket of distressed distended sounds in the present. One where Woods raucously declaims  repeatedly ' I am more than adequate, leave Kanye out of it'. This is 'Opus' a gripping ten minutes that takes you on an emotional journey into one person's despair.

On 'Science Fair' any idea that the band might lack musical balls is well and truly dispelled. Crackling along with menacing unease, as if actively following a man who is some type of unhinged stalker, living with his mum, who can only feel positive and in control of himself when he's out running. Guitar feedback, sliding strings and horns, a rumbling keyboard bring to this an out of control shamble, a drug fueled sense for his headspace and movement.

The version of 'Sunglasses' on For The First Time is an altogether more grungier affair than the EP version released a year before. It demonstrates the ongoing maturity and growing confidence of the band that they're happy to completely reformulate a previous release to better reflect the bands current approach and tone. Once again we have a frail man at the centre who only when he wears sunglasses can face and engage with the outside world 

Even the music on this album is unrepresentative of where the band is currently at, its out if date, its over a year old, being mostly recorded prior to the pandemic. Not even toured this stuff because of that. They are currently at work on completing their second album. On this splendid outing I wonder where they'll venture next. Their debut wonderfully blends elements of fire and sophistication, that whilst perhaps not yet achieving greatness, is a superb first grab at it.

CARROT REVIEW 6/8