by George Harry James (@georgeprobert)
Just months after losing their lead vocalist on the eve of a critically-acclaimed second record, Black Country, New Road emerged with a live album of new material pieced together and tested on the road; the show must go on and all that. The band have ditched much of the postmodern, hyper-referential songwriting on their earlier work in favour of fairy tales, half-remembered dreams and anthropomorphic animals. Live At Bush Hall is more Brothers Grimm than “hardcore cyber fetish early noughties zine”.
The new record is the product of three special shows at the titular London venue. Each was billed as a performance of work by a (fictional) playwright: ‘When The Whistle Thins’ is set at a gathering of farmers, ‘I Ain't Alfredo No Ghosts’ in a pizza restaurant haunted by a poltergeist; and "The Taming Of The School" unfolds around a 1980s prom night.
The Live at Bush Hall concert film cuts between handheld shots of the band on stage each night in fake mustaches, straw hats and plastic prom-king crowns. In an intermission section, we see the band making cardboard set designs, which saxophonist Lewis Evans calls ‘a bit shit’. This DIY approach couldn’t be further from the carefully choreographed gloss of most live albums, not to mention the cerebral short films which have accompanied albums from artists like Arcade Fire to Kanye (to borrow an old BC,NR reference point).
It would have been easy for BC,NR to efface themselves – and their hasty reinvention as a six-piece - into this piece of theatre, evading any awkwardly candid moments by committing fully to the bit. Instead of putting a fourth wall between themselves and the audience, the band decided to let them in. Attendees were invited to dress-up for the occasion, and the film opens with fans pondering the question ‘what does BC,NR mean to you?’. Whoops and cheers are left on the live recording, as are bits of polite chat, like when bassist Tyler Hyde wishes the crowd ‘happy prom night’ and asks them to ‘please bear with us’.
This modest, knowingly amateurish presentation gives an endearing picture of a group of mates who are having fun and figuring it out as they go. In contrast to the virtuosic playing the band are known for, opener ‘Up Song’ indulges in a cheesy bit of self-love: ‘Look at what we did together / BC,NR friends forever’. It’s a well-deserved pat on the back, a wink to the fans and proof of the band’s sense of humour.
Beyond the unconventional packaging (the fake-play set up doesn’t actually figure after the intro), the tracks on Live at Bush Hall speak for themselves and are largely excellent. From the desperate melodrama of ‘I Won’t Always Love You’ which details the conflicted final throes of a relationship, to the wistful memories of ‘The Wrong Trousers,’ it’s clear that the band haven’t given up on the raw vulnerability of Ants From Up There, nor have they retreated fully into allegorical obscurity.
The band will have been aware that these break-up songs could be received as reflections on the exit of Isaac Wood. On ‘The Wrong Trousers,’ Lewis Evans tellingly slips into collective pronouns as he sings ‘you grew far away from us’, before Hyde joins to conclude that ‘we made something to be proud of’. Coy yet frank, BC,NR seem comfortable playing with this ambiguity. There’s none of the mercurial streams-of-consciousness found on For The First Time, but Hyde’s tracks in particular retain some of Wood’s tricksy self-awareness. The thunderous climax of ‘Laughing Song’ sees Hyde list off each track title on the record before confessing to ‘laughing at your own songs again,’ while the lyrics of ‘Dancers’ slam a performer who may or may not be the narrator herself: ‘I was so fucking bored, but still they loved to lap it up’. These moments touch on the self-doubt that comes with creation and performance, providing an effective foil to the congratulatory moments elsewhere on the record.
‘Turbines / Pigs’ presents the record’s standout moment with a fantastical tale of a self-loathing witch, beginning only with May Kershaw’s Bjorkian whisper and plaintive piano notes. Built around the biblical proverb ‘cast not swine before pearls,’ each chorus swells with a desperate melancholy every bit as moving as something like the previous record’s ‘Bread Song’. After six minutes, the rest of the band enter the fold one-by-one and the track builds to a rapturous, triumphant instrumental crescendo, sounding like a much sunnier Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Live at Bush Hall showcases the band’s ability to spotlight different sounds in a way that never feels disjointed or overcrowded. ‘I Won’t Always Love You’ begins with a medieval-sounding section led by Georgia Ellery’s violin and Evans on flute, before Luke Mark lures things back to the present with a hypnotic guitar riff. This communal ethos is foregrounded by the fact that lead vocals now rotate among the members, including the odd chant in unison and some electrifying screams from drummer Charlie Wayne at the climax of ‘Dancers’. Despite the magnetic presence of Wood on their earlier work, BC,NR have always been greater than the sum of their parts. Hastily written and released against circumstances that would have lesser bands out for the count, Live At Bush Hall sees the shape-shifting sextet come out swinging.