Filmed over a three-night stand in London last December, and unveiled on YouTube last month, Live at Bush Hall is hardly the typical concert doc. At Bush Hall, Black Country, New Road ceased to be England’s buzziest indie band and instead turned themselves into the country’s most irreverent dinner-theater act, organizing each evening around a fake play concept, complete with costumes, DIY stage props, and souvenir programs detailing imaginary plot synopses set at a farm, an Italian restaurant, and a high-school dance, respectively. But even if Live at Bush Hall wasn’t intended to be the next official entry in their canon, the accompanying soundtrack album certainly earns its right to be considered as such. Notwithstanding the occasional bit of stage banter that makes no sense without the film (“Happy prom night!”), Live at Bush Hall is as cohesive a statement as any other record in the band’s discography.
Where the glorious peaks on Ants From Up There had to be earned—you don’t get to experience the rapturous chorus of “Snow Globes” without first taking the five-minute trek up the mountain to get there—this iteration of Black Country, New Road go straight for the joy, opening the shows with a celebratory theme-song tribute to themselves, the aptly titled “Up Song.” As Evans squawks out a sax melody that sounds like “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” being played at a school recital, the band unleashes a torrent of wild, piano-pounding, old-time rock’n’roll that climaxes with an ecstatic group hug of a chorus: “Look at what we did together!/BC,NR friends forever!” But within that cheeky refrain is a serious, blood-pact reaffirmation of the group’s unshakeable camaraderie. “Up Song” is more than just a readymade curtain-raiser; it’s proof that a band can, within months, lose its most integral member, reallocate musical roles, scramble to write an entirely new setlist (all while violinist Georgia Ellery withstood the strong gravitational pull of her other, equally buzzworthy band, Jockstrap), and come out sounding wholly reenergized.
None of Black Country, New Road’s newly anointed vocalists can match Wood’s natural, scenery-chewing gravitas—nor do they try to. But each singer subtly carves out a distinct personality that helps nudge BC,NR toward both giddy new heights and devastating new depths. Where Wood could invest pop-cultural references with the metaphorical weight of scripture, the messaging and delivery here are more matter-of-fact and heart-on-sleeve. Hyde recounts the push-pull of a toxic relationship on “I Won’t Always Love You,” her deadpan tone transforming the song into a piece of post-rock cabaret, while the stirring, string-quivering “Laughing Song” is as vulnerable and tender as a fresh bruise, with Hyde not only eulogizing a failed relationship but also admitting her own self-sabotaging role in its demise. Evans, conversely, plays the lovestruck fool on “Across the Pond Friend,” a swashbuckling serenade detailing those rare weekend getaways when long-distance relationships become IRL couplings, where even the most mundane activities (“On our last night/We watched a film and had a cry”) feel like minor miracles.
