Music Reviews

After a long wait, the debut album from the UK collective Black Country, New Road finally arrived and I gotta say, it’s everything any of us could’ve wanted from it – like serioulsy, who debuts like that?? Anyways this album is only 6 songs long, all of them ranging from 4 to 10 minutes in length, this makes for a pretty cohesive listen.

The record opens up with „Instrumental“ which to everyone’s surprise is an instrumental piece and also the only song on the album without any words sung – it’s a weird yet fitting choice for the opener to this album. The keys are instantly catchy and the groove pretty much irresistible, with some booming haunting melodies and grandious horns in the second half of the track, where the instrumentation just builds until it explodes like an atomic bomb – it serves well as a preparation to what’s ahead of you. The record only gets better from here with songs like „Athens, France“, which is where we are introduced to our protagonist and the song really mathces the tone with that, there is a sense of mystery and temptation, as the track is also not as immidate as the previous one – it takes time with it’s pacing and it moves rather slowly – the pay off in this one is more emotional then anything, the later half is really what sells it. Then we get the very story-driven „Science Fair“, which picks the pace up instantly with again, slowly but surely building instrumentation and exploding like halfway through with some insane horns added in adding a layer of insanity – it’s a really powerful moment in the tracklist, much like every other track. The 10-minute long „Sunglasses“ was one of the teaser tracks released before the album’s release, but that single version was completely scrapped and re-done from the ground – some may prefere the original one, and I completely get why, but this one really fits the tone of the album better, really being the centrepiece of this whole thing. The phases this song goes through are absolutely nuts, from the more melancholic and melodic start to the sheer insanity that is the second part – the horns, the guitars, the drums, everything just blends so well into this magnififcent larger-then-life expirience. Then comes the much neede slow down with the song „Track-X“, which is one of the more lo-fo tracks on the album, also serving as one of the albums most beautiful moments – the strings are what really sells this one, as well as the vocal harmonizing, but it’s really the whole package to be honest. And then we get the closer, the literal „Opus“, which is as good as an ending for this thing could’ve turned out. This is essentially the best parts of this album compressed into one song with the addition of even more horns, even more beautiful melodies and possibly the biggest climax of them all.

So yeah, there could definetly be found more to be said about this beautiful piece of work, but honestly no words can really describe the feeling I get when listening to this – just do yourself a favor and listen to this thing, you defintely won’t regret it. SO FAR my aoty.

Decent 9/10