Black Country, New Road: For the first time - Review

This is a review for my month long Album-a-Day adventure in Jan. 2022. if you want to read the other reviews, check out the original post.

I realized as I started listening to this album that even though I saw their name on every music related thing for the past year, I had zero clue what the hell Black Country, New Road even sounded like. After listening to their debut record, I’m not sure I can even articulate their sound well, but oh man was it amazing.

The instrumentation on the whole thing was just killer. I love saxophone. I love violin. You get a lot of both. Even on the more chaotic parts of the songs, the recordings and performances of the instruments are some of my favorite parts of the album, and I really liked that a lot. Lyrically, I had a lot of fun with this. The songs are overwhelmingly serious but with some things packed in there that just made me chuckle - the mention of a NutriBullet in Sunglasses, the line “I’m more than adequate; Leave Kanye out of this” later on that track, the repurposing of a Phoebe Bridgers lyric on Athens, France ("‘Why don’t you sing with an English accent?'; Well I guess it’s too late to change that now") - lots of lyrical moments that I really loved here. The songs felt fun but also very haunting at the same time.

The vocal performances on this were super interesting too - most came off very spoken-word-y, but they continued to be interesting, which is where I can find issue with some less-sing-y vocals sometimes - I didn’t find myself bored of a monologue, and I think the excellent lyrics do a lot to help that.

My favorite moment on the 6-song album has to be the final track, Opus. It’s got such a somber and eerie feel that just kept me entranced and also left me very sad afterwards. It was so neat how effortlessly the track switches between these slow, haunting verses into the fast paced manic midsections - it’s a unique feel that lends itself to one hell of an album closer.

Even though the album runs at just over 40 minutes, I did find myself wishing there was more - with only 6 songs, it still feels a bit short, even though there’s only one song under 5 minutes long. It’s such a minor knock against it though, because the songs included here were so damn good.

I feel like I’m not doing this album enough justice by writing about it - go do yourself a favor and listen to this if you haven’t before, it’s an absolute treat.

Score: 9/10

Favorite Songs: it’s unfair to say all of them, but c’mon, there’s only 6!

One Recommendation: Athens, France