Review Summary: Easing any fears that the band's best years are already behind them, Live at Bush Hall is a bold and adventurous performance that shows Black Country, New Road have plenty more to offer.
Black Country, New Road don’t make things easy, do they? Since bursting onto the scene with 2019’s explosive “Sunglasses,” the band have garnered much acclaim and derision for seemingly being, depending on who you asked, the Good or Bad Ending of whatever the hell butterfly effect has rippled from David Bowie endorsing Arcade Fire all those years ago.
For the First Time was a bold, if uneven, debut that showed equal amounts of promise as it did recursive wank as the band put forth a collection of songs that sounded like they were poptimistic versions of Godspeed! You Black Emperor. 2022’s
Ants From Up There was then a quantum leap forward for the band as they sanded some of the edges -emphasis on
some, as the album’s climax is about a nocturnal emissions tribute for Charli XCX- to make way for a far more palatable and mature sense of structure that seemed destined to canonize the band as the Next Big Thing. But, there was a twist: the band’s charismatic frontman called it quits due to mental health issues right before the album released and the band had to cancel their victory lap tour to regroup and reassess how to chart a path forward, if a path were to be charted forward under the moniker at all. After taking a few months off to hastily write a new collection of songs to have something,
anything else to play live than the contributions from Wood out of respect for his departure, the new iteration of the band would tour to workshop their new sound and assure fans that they are not going anywhere.
All this to say, it should come as no surprise that merely saying “
Live at Bush Hall is a live album by Black Country, New Road” buries the lede quite a bit. A collection of completely new material performed over three nights that the band itself has professed probably won’t make their next proper studio album, it’s both an unconventional victory lap on the winding path their career has taken so far and a glimpse at what to (maybe) expect going forward. The resulting performance likely won’t convert any who insist the band’s vaudevillian antics are trite and recursive, but should ease those who have hopped aboard the train of dried out soup cans and sadsack saxophones that the coffin should not be closed on the band just yet.
So then,
Live at Bush Hall can really be judged on two terms: as a performance, and as an album. As a performance, it is an undeniable triumph. As an album, it’s really d
amn good. The band presses forward with three members switching off primary vocal duties -two of which are good, but all three of which adding enough variety to keep the performance side of things interesting- and choosing to continue charting new territory. “Up Song” is the band’s catchiest and punkiest song to date, having the singalong “Look at what we did together/B-C-N-R friends forever!” anchor down what will surely be a live staple for years to come. “The Boy” and “I Won’t Always Love You” charter theatrical territory that the band may have skimmed in the past, but making them center focus with movements -literally spoken out loud in the former- with a lack of subtlety that is surprisingly refreshing for a band that could maybe be accused of obfuscating and longwinded in the past.
That’s not to say that the band doesn’t attempt to iterate on the past elsewhere. “Turbines/Pigs” is the best song here and crescendos with a tidal wave of arpeggios that sound eerily similar to “Basketball Shoes”, but still carving out its own space in the band’s mythos by sounding more tectonic. “Dancers” finds vocalist Tyler Hyde doing the best to ape her departed bandmate by lamenting how boring the ballet can be over one of the band’s most crushing and heaviest performances to date, satiating the appetite for more traditional BCNR faire, if such a thing can exist on the band’s cramped timeline.
The album’s lone albatross really hangs on vocalist Lewis Evans, whose performances sound more like a kid given vocal duties of opportunity obligations in a school musical than someone you’d like to see step into Isaac Wood’s shoes, but the live nature of the album works in his favor. His contributions can more or less be played off as interesting experiments rather than focal points. Hell, “Across the Pond Friend” is so infectious that it sounds like the band lovingly and knowingly rallying around his strained and waning vocals, adding to the themes of friendship and camaraderie that are so omnipresent. The less said about “The Wrong Trousers,” the better.
Live at Bush Hall will surely draw more lines in the sand for a band that already has done so much of that, but it’s a weird hybrid performance/album that ultimately succeeds despite the monumental challenges it has going against it. The few blemishes that do show can ultimately be ignored due to the energetic performance and unique placement in what will surely be one helluva History section on Wikipedia. If this is what Black Country, New Road can cook up as mostly throwaways in a few short months, than the future may yet be just as bright as that captivating, if uneven, first chapter.
“B-C-N-R, friends forever” indeed.
