A lot of buzz has surrounded Black Country, New Road’s aptly-titled debut album, For the First
Time. Branded alongside Black Midi as one of the forward-thinking groups that are leading what
“rock music” could mean in 2021, they’ve had a significant following anticipating this release.
Since 2018, the London-based group has been releasing bootlegs that have earned descriptors
such as “misanthropic”, “experimental”, and “avant-garde”. Among the lead items for their
attention include visceral lyrics, criticized as misogynistic, including:
Kendall Jenner is bleeding all over this couch
It’s gonna take a lot of bleach
To get all these stains out
From the track “Kendall Jenner”, which doesn’t appear on this album.
She’s sexually enlightened, and she’s forward, and that fazes me
She won’t give up– too soft to fuck– but how hard could it really be?
From the single version of “Athens, France”; this couplet is not found on the album version.
Their debut, however, brings their dissonant sound to a wider audience, featuring vocalist Isaac
Wood, also known as “The Guest”, belting drunken-sounding rants ranging from spoken word to
panicked yelps that provide a lens into disaffected and nihilistic English youth, as demonstrated
by the following lines from stand-out track “Sunglasses”:
Mother is juicing watermelons on the breakfast island
And with frail hands she grips the NutriBullet
And the bite of its blades reminds me of a future that I am in no way part of
Gone are many of the band’s more questionable lyrics and themes (though still exist in some
capacity), with the tracks truncated for length and content. The editing ultimately serves to
benefit the band’s focus, which has been maligned as disjointed and struggling for consistency
at times, and creates a much stronger sense of cohesion during the album’s forty-minute
runtime.
Another highlight is “Track X”, which is arguably the album’s most straight-forward and
accessible, acts as proof for the band’s new approach – it’s the album’s shortest track, at just
under five minutes, and features a steady, driving guitar lead, meandering saxophone, and,
somehow, an excerpt of the album’s more optimistic lyrics:
I left my drink on the 18th floor
Thought about jumping in your face when you saw
I thought of my father and proving him wrong
But mostly Molly and Dylan and my mum
“It just made sense for it to be something quieter, calmer,” Wood says on “Track X”, the most
recently written on the album, “It definitely gives the most glimpse of our new material.” While
the release as it stands contains a lot of great moments that speak of incredible potential for a
group that is still figuring out their sound, For the First Time includes too much of the old
material that relied on shock value to get a reaction. These are great tracks in their own right,
but end up sounding somewhat awkward, having been edited to suit a more commercial debut,
which holds them back at times. With that being said, Black Country, New Road have
established themselves on the leading edge of whatever comes next, so I’m happy to join the
hype train.
8.5/10