With Black Country, New Road you can never be sure where their music will take you next. However, you can always be certain that wherever they take you, the journey will be full of exhilarating twists and turns. Forever Howlong, the third studio LP from the English sextet–and first since former lead vocalist Isaac Wood’s departure in 2022, announced four days before the release of their critically lauded Ants from Up There–marks the beginning of a new era for the group.

On their excellent forthcoming LP, perhaps their finest body of work to date, lead vocal and songwriting duties were shared amongst Georgia Ellery, Tyler Hyde and May Kershaw. In the accompanying press materials for Forever Howlong, Ellery said of BC,NR’s new configuration: “It created a real through line for the album, having three girls singing. It’s definitely very different to Ants From Up There, because of the female perspective – and the music we’ve made also compliments that.” The music, on this occasion, is an absorbing combination of rich baroque pop, prog, compelling 1970s folk and incorporates flourishes from a range of artists that influenced each member during the recording process from The Roches to Janis Ian and Joanna Newsom, all delivered with Black Country, New Road’s distinct style.

Over Zoom, Black Country, New Road’s Charlie Wayne (drums, percussion) and Lewis Evans (saxophone, flute) spoke to Northern Transmissions about their different experiences with each studio record, the troubles of tracklist sequencing, and having fun learning the recorder.

NT: The new record, Forever Howlong, is so great and really feels as though it’s welcoming a new chapter for Black Country, New Road’s sound. It follows a period where you went through some changes and Tyler Hyde, May Kershaw and Georgia Ellery are now at the forefront of the music as lead lyricists and vocalists across the record. When you were getting ready to tour Ants from Up There, you wrote a lot of new material for those shows after Isaac Wood left the band. How much of that material from that tour made it onto the new LP? Charlie Wayne: None!

Lewis Evans: No, the song “Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me)” was written right at the start of the writing process for our Live at Bush Hall live record which had all of those songs that we had to write in order to tour without Isaac. We never really played it that much because it was Georgia’s song and she was really busy with Jockstrap [Ellery’s other musical project alongside Taylor Skye], so we didn’t get to do that song very much. Tyler sang it a few times, but it just didn’t really work with it not being Tyler’s song and it just felt as though we needed to just park that for a bit. We spent a while making sure it got the arrangement it required and I’m really pleased we did because I think that track sounds great.

NT: You worked with James Ford to make this record, how did that collaboration come about and how was that experience?

Charlie Wayne: It was amazing. He had registered some interest about a year before we actually properly spoke about it and it was just very conversational, we’d just bumped into each other at something. He was just such an amazing producer to work with. We were slightly hesitant at first, not because of anything to do with him or his personality, but sort of because he’d done so many massive albums, and albums that have been so successful, we worried that would suddenly puts us into a bit of a big league conversation that I don’t think the band necessarily wanted to be in or we felt that it put a bit more pressure onto the thing. It maybe would seem as though we were trying to angle for something that we maybe want. To actually work with him, though, he was a combination of an ultimate chiller, he’s extremely easy-going, and also extremely diligent and hardworking in equal measure. There was also a complete lack of an ego, he’s just extremely nice and easy to get on with and he’s, of course, very, very capable and very content with any role that you wanted from him. He was just brilliant. He made the entire thing seamless really, at least from his end.

NT: Is it true that you had like 16-hour-long days in the studio?

Lewis Evans: He did, not us! We weren’t working as hard as him. He spent so much time working on the record, he would get to the studio at 10am every day and he’d be preparing the files, preparing the session for the day. Then he’d be in there until like 2am and whenever we’d take breaks for lunch, like he’d only take breaks for lunch, but we’d have these long extended breaks where we’d be playing table tennis and he’d just head back and work on stuff. He was so hardworking. It was amazing, it was really powerful actually, because he had the ability to still have his ears still be so fresh and sharp after being in a room with no windows for hours and hours. That’s an incredible skill.

NT: You’ve worked with three different producers for each BC,NR record. Looking back on all of those experiences, what have been some of the most valuable things you learned from each of them and their approaches to work that you’ve incorporated into your own process?

Charlie Wayne: The first record we did, we made that in London with Andy Savours, and I think the main takeaway from that was seeing how a studio actually functions and works because none of us had ever properly done a studio session as a band before. That was an exercise in figuring out how to do it and Andy was great in guiding us through that process and making some decisions and allowing us to make certain decisions. Then, the second time around, we went the opposite direction and we were like, ‘Well, we don’t really want the album to have a producer at all so how can we get away with that whilst also not really knowing how to produce a record ourselves?’. So, we got Sergio Maschetzko, who was our sound engineer, and he’d never been in a studio before, literally ever! The first time he was ever in a studio was when we were recording a bunch of ABBA covers for like a Rough Trade end of the year kind of thing and he came in and found out what all the various knobs did. He was brilliant. He was literally exactly what the project needed, we just needed someone who could make us sound great as we did live and he was already our sound engineer and he could make it that but then also a bit more and add his own flair on it. That was great and it was a really exciting opportunity to get to know our own sound again with someone who already knew it. Then the third time around, it was the opposite again, because we just couldn’t record it all live and James was the best person, I think, as far as we were concerned, to make it sound as good as we could in a proper studio environment and making music as though it sounded like it was from a studio. They’ve all been really great and interesting experiences.

Lewis Evans: We’ll go the opposite way for the next one. We’ll get like a local monk or something like that to work with us in the studio!

NT: You can record in a cave! I really enjoyed all of the new elements woven into these songs from the vocal harmonies between Tyler, Georgia and May to there being harpsichord and mandolin, as well as the recorder. There’s such a big sound across the album andI was wondering what pre-production looks like for the band because the songs can be so massive.

Lewis Evans: The pre-production for us was mainly playing the songs as they were to James in a rehearsal room and being like, ‘How can we best achieve this?’ and maybe say, ‘Oh, there’s this other bit… Here, we’ll play it to you now but we can’t play this at the same time as playing another instrument…’, for example, so those moments would be the only times where we had to get him to envisage, in his world, how it would happen. Most of the song writing and the parts-writing was done before we got into the studio. I feel like with the amount that’s going on on the record, it would have been quite difficult to do all of that writing in the studio and have the time then later to do any overdubs, if need be. So, they were quite fully fledged songs before they got into the studio. That was the pre-production for this album because we all had these quite strong ideas of certain sounds we wanted; we knew that we wanted much more mandolin on this record and we knew we wanted the harpsichord. We knew we wanted timpanis on “For The Cold Country”, we knew we wanted recorders in the song “Forever Howlong”, so I think there was a lot of preparation done. We had a lot of time to think-up and write these songs and get them to a point where they were basically finished before the studio.

NT: How was it for you to see May, Georgia and Tyler take on more roles within the band as lyricists and vocalists? Did you notice any particular ways that their dynamic and relationship as bandmates evolved during the process?

Charlie Wayne: Yeah, it’s one of those things where you anticipate it being really cool and then when it actually turns out to be really cool, we were just really excited. Maybe the trickiest bit about this album was with the writing part in trying to make sure everything sounded uniform and you can have these three distinctive worlds where there are three different principal songwriters and lyricists creating their own thing and then trying to stitch them together and make it sort of seem as though they are representative of a whole thing. That was pretty tough, but I think in the beginning, the songs were more separate from one another and then as time went on, as we continued writing, they started bouncing off of each other and finding little threads in their own songs and styles of playing which were later reflected in other bits. Say, for example, the songs “Besties”, “Happy Birthday” and “The Big Spin” were sort of all written as reflections of one another. May came in with “The Big Spin” and we started arranging it properly and then that spurred Georgia on to write “Besties” and from there Tyler was inspired to arrange “Happy Birthday” in the way that we did. It was challenging but it’s an amazing thing to have three singers who can sing in that way together and whose voices match up in such a sort of brilliant texture. We’re very lucky, I guess, more than anything.

NT: I was wondering, even the way that you’re talking about the different types of songs and moods, you have something like “Happy Birthday” and “Salem Sisters” which have a huge, mini-opera feel in a sort of Supertramp or 10cc way, and then there’s “Nancy Tries To Take The Night” and “Mary” which are so spooky and have a 1970s folk-horror feel to them. I was curious to hear about your process of sequencing the album because the songs flow into one another so well.

Lewis Evans: That was probably the hardest process of the whole record, to be honest. Charlie Wayne: Yeah, easily.

Lewis Evans: It was so hard because a lot of us had differing opinions about it and it was also hard because we were having to decide whilst being on tour so you’re never in the right headspace to be doing that. Unless you’re by yourself a lot and listening to it loads by yourself. So, it was difficult. The front half of the record made a load of sense and we were all, give or take a couple tracks which were quite easy to compromise on. We were all in agreement, at least, for what we called the “pop-half of the record” which ends with “Happy Birthday”, I think?

Charlie Wayne: Yeah, I think so.

Lewis Evans: Then, from “For The Cold Country”, that was where things got more difficult. At the start, all of us apart from May really wanted “For The Cold Country” as the album closer because it’s so impactful and big but May didn’t and wanted it in the middle. We all slowly tried it out in the middle, I was against it at first but then I ended-up liking it being in the middle but still preferring it at the end. Now, obviously, it’s in the middle and “Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me)” is a great way to end the record because it’s an uplifting moment. It would feel quite devastating if it ended “For The Cold Country”. But, you know, that would have been a good way to end the record, as well. There are so many ways you can do it and at the end of the day, I was really happy with all the songs on this album and I don’t think it affects the quality of the record, so I was fine to agree with my vote and have it in the middle. These are also really hard things to do as well because we have a very hard line democratic policy with everything we do in the band where everyone, or at least the majority, has to agree. And even if it’s a majority, the people who don’t agree have to be won over, as well. We did get compromised, didn’t we Charlie?

Charlie Wayne: We did, yeah. We were on the road and literally it must have been like, it’s like 4am or something, it was fucking stupid, but in the small hours in the morning, we were at a service station in like, I don’t know, near Birmingham, I think, and we’d all listened to the album maybe three times in a row on the tour bus. We had to come to some sort of conclusion and we didn’t! We came to a majority, and then came to the conclusion that we could have two different tracklists. There’s a special edition of the album, which has an alternative track list where “For The Cold Country” finishes the album, which is quite a nice compromise!

Lewis Evans: It’s a very ‘70s approach, I think!.

NT: With the democratic process within the band, I’m interested to hear about the recorder. Luke and Charlie learned how to play in the midst of making the album, correct? Why did you choose to pick up the recorder and how did you find it?

Lewis Evans: Well, we had to learn it at school, as well. I think Luke and Charlie would have done, too. Georgia, also was having to learn. Tyler’s got reasonably strong wind-playing chops because she plays clarinet. I mean, she’s got strong clarinet chops, but that means it’s a bit transferrable. I’m obviously a wind player, so I can pick them up. But these guys, Charlie, Georgia, and Luke, were properly learning the instrument. And the arrangement, for “Forever Howlong”, we did it in chronological order as we were arranging the song, so we started at the top, as you often do, and when we started, everyone’s recorder playing ability was not all that high. The parts start off very simple and as you get further in the song, and people get better at the recorder, after doing loads of rehearsals, the arrangement gets a bit more complex, which is quite fun. It was kind of like composition through necessity rather than choice, which is, you know, it’s always good to have parameters.

The reason for the recorder is that May had this song and she initially really wanted clarinets; she wanted five clarinets underneath it. She’d had this idea for these stacked-up notes underneath to accompany her singing. That would have been too hard for everyone to learn clarinet because it’s not an easy instrument to pick up at all. It’s really difficult, harder than saxophone or flute or any of the ones that I play. I had the idea that maybe we do a recorder version of that because there’s a Joanna Newsom song, I can’t remember which one it is, where there’s some quite thick recorders playing in harmony and it sounds a bit like a pipe organ almost but it’s got a bit more, because the pipe organ obviously is sustained notes on the keyboard, all the notes sound so perfect, but there’s a warble to the recorders. It’s that same kind of fugal feel to it; it’s really earthy and old. It’s also got a bit of imperfection to it, which gives it a warmth. And so yeah, I suggested we go for that and May was into it and we bought five recorders and all learned how to play. My friend Gabriel, he’s a proper recorder player, he plays baroque, like recorder pieces and he’s very, very good. He came over to my house and we spent a day on the arrangement and had a lovely Thai curry and he taught us all how to basically play recorderand showed us the do’s and don’ts, which was great. It was really helpful. He’s thanked on the back of the record!

NT: Oh, that sounds really nice. I love how it sounds on that song, the way they’re layered in the arrangement is just so effective.

Lewis Evans: Yeah. It’s a nice sound, isn’t it? That was actually an absolute nightmare to record. My parents came to the studio one day, they could come down for three hours, and they really wanted to see what it was like; the amazing studio, amazing producer. They had to come on the one day we were doing the recorders! It was like, we’d record the same three seconds over and over and over and over and over again. It was just a bit insane. They left after about an hour and a half, I think!

NT: Earlier today, I was watching the band do a What’s in My Bag at Amoeba Records. Joanna Newsom was an artist that was picked in that haul and you mentioned her earlier. I was wondering if there were some albums that you were listening to while making the album that filtered into some of the tonal or melodic influences. The Roaches were also mentioned in that video from Amoeba and you can absolutely hear how their vocal harmonies have been an influence on Forever Howlong. But for you two, was there anything recently that you’ve been really enjoying that’s creatively inspired you?

Charlie Wayne: Yeah, there’s always stuff that filters in. With The Roches, that album was a real staple for everyone. particularly “Hammond Song” and there was another song by them which was a pretty big influence. Personally, I’d been listening to a lot of, you can’t really hear it necessarily on the album, but lots of Wilco, lots of ‘90s alternative like Modest Mouse, Silver Jews. All of that sort of stuff is not only quite impactful on my drumming style, but also the acoustic treatment of how I like stuff to sound and how I like quite airy and organic, or I like to hear the acoustic spaces. But then also, you know, just rip off the Beach Boys in quite a lot of the percussion because it’s really good!

Lewis Evans: I was listening to a lot of The Band, loads of them. A lot of Dory Previn and Janis Ian. I was just trying to find this album that I was actually banging out loads, but I just can’t find it right now. Her name escapes me, but I will find that for you.

NT: It was so sad when Garth Hudson died, especially because he was the last surviving member. Lewis Evans: Yeah, that really hit me. That was really sad. He was arguably the coolest member as well. Oh, I found the album I was talking about a second ago, it’s really cool. It’s by Ellen McIlwaine and it’s called We The People. I discovered it on The Quietus in an article from maybe 10 years ago on lost albums from the 1970s. She’s just incredible. Her melodic treatment is kind of perfect; Her feel and her rhythm is so good. I was trying to channel whatever she has in her melodic writing, her singing and her like ornamentation in my sax playing as much as possible on this record because it really had kind of a more R&B, soul feel but with a Greenwich Village folk thing that I felt I could bring to the record. That album was big for me at the time.

NT: Amazing, that sounds great! You’ve got a big tour coming-up soon. How are you feeling about the upcoming shows? Have you had to figure out ways to combine the songs across the three records for the setlist?

Charlie Wayne: Well, we haven’t actually played any of the first two albums since Isaac left the band so that has made our decisions a bit easier for us in that there’s only one album to play. I think we’re going to probably mix in a bit of the stuff from the live record that we did, we’ll revisit some of the arrangements to try and make them feel fresh. I’m personally extremely excited about playing shows.

It’s been ages since we’ve done a proper headline show or been on tour properly. And yeah, I can’t wait. I’m kind of itching to get going really. It’s a very weird job being a musician in this way when you’re neither writing or recording or touring and you’re talking about social media posts! Obviously, we feel extremely lucky, but we’re going through a limbo period.

Pre-order Forever Howlong by Black Country, New Road HERE