Things rarely associated with fun: 1) free jazz, 2) math rock, 3) Black Country, New Road. On the London band’s second album there is less of the “fire in a pet shop” jazz than on their 2021 debut For the First Time, but there are still whiplash changes of time signature and songs that take forever to get going. Thankfully, music isn’t just about fun: it can be about creating remarkable soundworlds of baroque pop fantasias, and this band are outstanding at those.
Like Arcade Fire, BC,NR’s playfulness and humour is unfairly overlooked, smothered by an intensity that seems utterly inimical to fun. Maybe it’s not quite TV Burp, but Isaac Wood’s voice, heavy like a father’s frown, solemnly obsessing over Billie Eilish, Concorde and “the clamp”, is a hoot. Shame that he unexpectedly left the band last week, as he’s often the best thing about it.
He kills on the long-awaited Basketball Shoes, which performs the same task here as it does at their gigs: a slippery, shifting set closer that partly reprises what you’ve just heard, and spurs the band on to a startling, vicious crescendo. To get the full effect, listen to the album from start to finish, over and over again. It’s a blast.
