'WE HAD A CHOICE: END THE BAND OR SHARE THE SPOTLIGHT'

When Black Country, New Road's singer quit, they could have all called it a day. Instead, they have reinvented themselves as the most exciting indie pioneers since The Last Dinner Party.

- Lisa Wright

It's a blustery Friday afternoon outside on the streets of Hackney, but in the belly of storied recording studio The Premises, Black Country, New Road are giving us a spirited tour of the famous faces that have frequented the building. Down in the basement lock-up, cages are filled with cases attributed to Laura Marling and Jarvis Cocker; one time, explains guitarist Luke Mark, they saw Charli xcx's name written on the studio board. “We opened the door and there was just an open laptop in the middle of an empty room,” he remembers, forlornly. If nothing else, however, quite a fitting metaphor for the reigning queen of online culture.

As the six members pack up their gear from an afternoon rehearsal ahead of the release of this month's ecstatically-received third studio album Forever Howlong — also recorded within these walls — talk rattles between their various commutes (“This place is mildly inconvenient for everyone, and that’s democracy”) and the unexpectedly rich selection of plastic instruments you can purchase from a wildlife gift shop. Considering that, for their inaugural two records — 2021’s Mercury Prize-nominated For the First Time and the following year’s Ants from Up There — Black Country, New Road were regarded as serious musos at the forefront of the new south London alternative scene, it’s all a far cry from the existential wranglings that made their name.

In the three years since that last record, however, an awful lot has changed for the group. A few days before the release of Ants from Up There, then-frontman Isaac Wood quit the band citing overwhelming mental health difficulties. “I have bad news which is that I have been feeling sad and afraid too. And I have tried to make this not true but it is the kind of sad and afraid feeling that makes it hard to play guitar and sing at the same time,” he said in a post on the band’s Instagram page.