Brixton’s Black Country, New Road – originally a Slint-type organism with a backing team of classical musicians – had shifted towards Orchestral and theatrical suites on the live album, Bush Hall, after the departure of lead vocalist and songwriter Isaac Wood. Forever Howlong signals the complete break from the band’s post-punk origins. Instead, it indulges in influences from musichall, pantomime and British folk music and of course the countless bands of British music by way of Genesis that indulged in similar influences. Now primarily led by multi-instrumental and vocalist Georgia Ellery and May Kershaw, For the Cold Country belongs not to the tradition of Slint but to British progressive rock, the medieval freak-folk of Joanna Newsom and Devandra Benhart and perhaps even the piano cabaret ‘kitsch’ of Regina Spektor. The modus operandi is still to splice and splinter the song format to create an off-kilter effect.
The jaunty pantomine Besties with a bright, childlike refrain is the simplest track. The rest of the tracks employ similar tricks to the forlorn piano ballad Socks; meandering melodies and garish arrangements. The latter includes at least six shifts in different rhythmic and melodic directions but none of which are particularly compelling or highlight a memorable song. The track Salem Sisters is comparably simpler and more effective, alternating between staccato bar room piano and guitar arpeggios and disjointed layers of xylophone and bass.
The first track that actually finds novel terrain is Two Horses which is also the first that employs creative use of rhythm, developing into a gypsy dance after 3 munutes of freak-folk. Mary and Namcy Takes The Night inject more renaissance folk influence and start to sound more and more like early Grizzly Bear or Devendra Benhart. The winding medieval ballad For The Cold Country warrants the most obvious comparison to Joanna Newsom while Happy Birthday, on both piano and mandolin, is the most cabaret, but at least contains one of the strongest melodies and some visceral dashes of progressive rock. Closer Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me) perhaps indicates how easily the band could shift to a more commercial format with its mellow acoustic progression and fanfare outro, which woul;d not look out of place on a Blur album.
If the songcraft is sometimes incoherent, the multitude of ideas and influences remains engaging. In some ways, the new formula improves on Isaac’s theatre-punk diatribes but in other ways, the array of contributors may be proverbially ‘spoiling the broth’, detracting from the clarity and coherence of the ideas and not producing anythign particularly novel in the process.
Label: Ninja Tune
Released: April 4, 2025
Losing My Edge Rating: 6/10