Manchester, England — Last month, six members of the Black Country on New Road were joking about trying something new in a cramped rehearsal room. Everyone was singing lead vocals.
First, group bassist Tyler Hyde sat in front and sang — her voice jumped between a smooth pop scream and a noisy scream. In May of next year, the car show, which normally plays the piano, took over and made a gentle and fragile voice like a folk singer. After that, saxophonist Luis Evans sang two songs.
“Dope like hell,” said band drummer Charlie Wayne when Evans was over. Evans didn’t seem to be very confident. “I was a little too late!” He said, sounding frustrated.
Just six months ago, one of Britain’s hottest rock acts, Black Country, New Road, was a completely different proposal. At that time, lead vocals were the realm of only one frontman. IsaacWood is an intense and sometimes uneasy-sounding singer whose adorable lyrics have earned fans and brought critical dedication to Black Country and New Road. The group’s debut album, “For the First Time,” was nominated for the Mercury Prize, Britain’s most important music award, last year. The second, “Ants From Up There,” was selected as a recommendation by New York Times critics.
But just before New Year’s Eve, Wood sent a Facebook message to his bandmates. He said he couldn’t get the public attention anymore. The stress of putting my heart on the stage was too great. He is gone.
Wayne said that when the message arrived, the band’s first thought was “the safety of our friends.” But when that was guaranteed, Wood is now in a much better place and has fun working at the cake shop, Evans said. The rest of the members had to decide what to do next.
After last month’s rehearsal, some of our bandmates got together in a sunny garden to discuss the moment. “Playing together is very important to us,” Kershaw said, so splitting was never an option.
However, bandmates seemed to be divided on how hard it was to restart. Hyde and Kershaw looked confused and laughed nervously when Evans started again after Wood’s departure and he said, “I didn’t feel like a big deal.” But his departure has given everyone a better understanding of how much pressure the band’s lead singer can be exposed to. There they found a solution: share the load.
At Wood’s suggestion, they kept the band’s name, but decided to stop playing the track he sang (Wood didn’t respond to requests for comment on the story). This means that before the rehearsal, the musicians were intense, fun and sometimes stressed for five months to write nine songs to complete the dates of this summer’s European festival. Without income from those appearances, they would have had to get a job, so they could hardly play together, Evans said.
Increasing economic and emotional pressure on musicians has been the focus of British media attention. In 2017, the non-profit Help Musicians set up a 24-hour helpline to help people with mental health problems and financial instability. Such concerns only increased when the pandemic closed the live venue, but the cost of living crisis raised further concerns.
Wood’s departure shows those pressures, said John Doran, a music journalist who has long defended New Road’s Black Country. Being in a successful indie band can lead to a good lifestyle in the past. Now, in a telephone interview, Doran said his actions were exhausted, “maybe someday I’ll have a mortgage and don’t need a side job.” “It’s no wonder musicians are so stressed,” Doran added. “I don’t envy them at all.”
In fact, this is the second time Black Country member New Road (all still in their early twenties) had to restart.
Four years ago, almost all of them played in another act called Nervous Conditions, which was on the verge of breaking through the highly competitive indie music scene in Britain. There are only a few tracks online. A website that creates taste has been declared One of the country’s “most exciting proposals”, record label representatives gathered at the show. However, the frontman, Connor Brown, Anonymous accusations of sexual assaultThe group broke up, issuing a statement apologizing for the wounds caused.
Hyde said his bandmates learned lessons from that moment. After the split, she said, “The whole spirit is’doing this for us, and because we want to.'” Since then, the band has rewritten and changed the lyrics every time they got tired of the song, she added.
When asked how he was able to continue to reform himself, the musician said it helped to have so many band members with different interests. But for the fans of the group, other factors were more important.London-based band Geordie Greep of Black Midi Tour America on New Road, Black Country In a telephone interview in September, he said that the members of the group were virtuoso musicians. He said it gave them ingenuity to keep changing their style.
Members of Black Country New Road, most of whom knew each other since high school, also had apparently strong community ties, Griep added. “These guys really don’t get in the way to hang out as friends,” he said with a bit of embarrassment. Most bands, including himself, don’t do that, he said.
Even with such an intimate group of musicians, the process of stepping up to lead vocals has never been so easy. Evans said he “shook” when he first sang the track he wrote for his bandmates. Kershaw said he felt it was “nervous” and told everyone “don’t worry” if he thought his track wasn’t “in the right mood”. She twisted into her seat, remembering her memory.
However, as the show was approaching, band members had to overcome their nerves again to sing in front of a paid audience. A few days later, the band walked on stage in the Pink Room, a music venue in Manchester, northern England, and was crowded with 250 people (immediately after Wood left, the group sold out in the city for a 1,800-seat show. Was canceled).
If Evans was still nervous, he didn’t have to.As soon as he started playing the flashy saxophone melody to open the trackUp song“He was greeted by a hoop from the audience. When the band arrived at the noisy chorus, the crowd began to jump up and down, as if they had heard the song hundreds of times. “Look at what we did together,” the band sang all at once, “BC, NR / Friends forever.”
A few tracks later, even the bar staff was silent when the car show sang.Turbine / pig“Don’t waste the pearls / I’m just a pig”, an 8-minute song that plays a gentle piano melody while singing.
Forty-five minutes later, the band walked behind the scenes, saying goodbye with some polite waves. Some fans shouted more until they realized that Black Country New Road couldn’t come back to Angkor. The new incarnation played all the songs it had.