Trying too hard, plain uninteresting

If you’ve looked at internet music discourse over the past couple of years, you may see a few names pop up more than others. A lot of people have similar favorites in these communities, and it can be interesting to see which albums and artists are talked about more than others. 

I can understand why certain artists are talked about. Radiohead is a band I think is very unique and brilliant; I have no qualms with Geese; and I think My Bloody Valentine is one of the most influential bands in alternative music today. There is one artist who I have never understood, though, and that is Black Country, New Road (BC, NR). 

BC, NR to me have never been more than “meh” due to several factors. One of the main factors to me is the way that their sound and style feel like they have less soul than the average band that is lauded by the greater online music community. I can give BC, NR credit for playing their instruments well, but their technicality doesn’t fit the overly theatrical delivery and lyrics.  

Don’t get me wrong, there are bands that are overly theatrical and do it very well (early Bright Eyes stuff is a great example of this), but BC, NR’s brand of theatrical delivery just doesn’t hit. The climax of “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” is a good example of how the delivery doesn’t work for me. Instead of using it to mix with the instrumental, the vocals and the instrumental both try to fight for the center. This way, they sound like they’re trying to clash directly into each other. It doesn’t help that former vocalist and guitarist Isaac Wood’s singing is just absolutely abhorrent. 

When listening to their music, the clashing delivery doesn’t make it sound conflicting or rich and soulful; it feels like they’re trying to go through a checklist to appeal to online music fans. Even Squid, an artist in the same scene, sounds a lot deeper and more colorful by comparison. Squid’s song “G.S.K.” is filled with horns, guitars and unique delivery like BC, NR’s music, but the main difference lies in the flow of the song. “G.S.K.” flows extremely well, with the horns adding in as much as they need to. The guitar aids the general tone of the song and the vocals are just intense enough to make the song memorable.  

This leads me to the next point I have: Black Country, New Road is plain uninteresting. Sonically, they sound like a lot of other horn-filled rock bands I've listened to. Their only advantage is their technicality, and their main disadvantage is their vocals. Everything else sounds like a more watered-down version of any other horn-filled band. 

Bands like The Ladybug Transistor and even online music favorite Neutral Milk Hotel keep horns more interesting in their music. The Ladybug Transistor uses horns to add a slight whimsical flair to their pop music (see “Six Times”), and Neutral Milk Hotel uses them heavily to add to their fuzzy folk ambience throughout their discography.  

I've noticed uses BC, NR horns to add cool points and mostly nothing else. Even songs heavy with horns like “Sunglasses” use them in a dull way. The horns in “Sunglasses” specifically could have been replaced with more guitar and it would achieve the exact same effect.  

BC, NR’s stylistic shifts throughout their discography don’t seem like they develop the band, either. It reads the same as most of their other decisions, which is appealing to that online audience.  

Their first album “For the First Time” reads as a slow and boring version of music like Black Midi and their album “Schlagenheim.” Whereas “Schlagenheim” has very fast elements that are engaging and cool to follow (see “Near DT, MI” and “953”), “For the First Time” has songs that seemed to drag on forever, with the aforementioned “Sunglasses” reaching almost nine minutes long and feeling much longer. 

“Ants From Up There” sounds like it’s just trying to copy 2000s tropes of indie pop music featuring horns and odd instrumentation. The instrumentation was present on their first album but takes full display here to give us basically nothing. It’s obviously trying to be Arcade Fire at points, with songs like “Concorde” sounding like the band listened to “Funeral” for the first time and thought it was the coolest thing ever. Their most recent album “Forever Howlong” followed in the previous album’s footsteps, and I forgot about some of the songs immediately after listening.  

Black Country, New Road will probably never appeal to me, and that’s fine. I am glad that other people seem to understand them and enjoy them, but they are very much not the band for me.