Black Country New Road

English post-rock combo Black Country New Road, hailing from London's fashionable "Windmill" scene, debuted with the Slint-influenced single Athen's France (2019), a six-minute kammerspiel, and the nine-minute, mutating, cinematic Sunglasses (2019). They were a septet when they recorded their debut album For the First Time (2021): vocalist Isaac Wood, guitarist Luke Mark, Georgia Ellery (violin), Lewis Evans (saxophone), May Kershaw (keyboards), Tyler Hyde (bass) and Charlie Wayne (drums). The album, which opens with the whirling Instrumental, somewhere between King Crimson and Slint, reprises Athens France and Sunglasses (mellowed down a bit), and its new material is mostly disappointing. Science Fair boasts an intricate beat and orchestral flourishes but the spoken-word vocals kills the momentum. The eight-minute Opus fais to leverage a clownish prog-rock fanfare with a bombastic finale.

Black Country New Road didn't improve on the more melodic Ants From Up There (2022). There's a lot of trite folk-rock (Bread Song) and of pretentious and bombastic post-rock (the 12-minute Basketball Shoes), but occasionally they distill something nice, if not original: echoes of Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen ring in emotional centerpiece Concorde; the seven-minute The Place Where He Inserted the Blade is emblematic of the way they mix decadent cabaret and clownish musichall with heavy doses of vintage melodramatic Brian Ferry and David Bowie; the slow and dejected nine-minute Snow Globes implodes after a noisy crescendo into a tiptoeing funereal chant. Isaac Wood quit the band for mental health reasons.

Meanwhile, violinist and vocalist Georgia Ellery pursued her side-project Jockstrap, a duo with producer Taylor Skye that released the EPs Love Is the Key to the City (2018) and Wicked City (2020), which already displayed a knack for an eccentric poppy version of glitch electronica (The City and City Hell). Their debut album I Love You Jennifer B (2022) is wildly schizophrenic, with songs that compress multiple styles in one and that rarely copy each other's style. Concrete Over Water sounds like a satire of Broadway showtunes, a stately crooned aria that quickly disintegrates under the weight of symphonic bombast. Greatest Hits reinvents dancefloor music with angelic soul crooning, twisted reggae guitar beat and orchestral synth The freak-folk elegy Lancaster Court coexists with the shoegazing distorted hymn Neon and the bedroom-pop lament Glasgow. Debra feels like a ill-tempered fusion of folk music and house music. There are two moments of real genius: the creepy gothic harp-driven Joni Mitchell-esque soul-jazz lied Angst and 50/50, a mash-up of breakbeats, rapping, ethereal dream-pop, K-pop, musique concrete, with a touch of Fatboy Slim.