Black Country, New Road have shared their chaotic new single ‘For The Cold Country’.
The track, which you can listen to below, is the latest to be shared from their forthcoming album ‘Forever Howlong’. It follows the first taster from the record, ‘Besties‘ and follow up ‘Happy Birthday‘.
The song is the first of the singles to feature keyboardist May Kershaw on lead vocals.
Building from choral layered vocal melodies and pared back instrumentation, the song swells and transforms into an enlivening, rowdy track.
The new album, which has been produced by James Ford, will be released on Ninja Tune on April 4 and can be pre-ordered/pre-saved here.
It will come in a variety of formats including a standard 2xLP on recycled black vinyl, a white label 2xLP signed by the band, an exclusive negative effect artwork 2xLP, a collector’s edition 2xLP with an alternate tracklist in translucent eco jazz red, and a collector’s edition cassette, also featuring the alternate tracklist.
Of the new album, Georgia Ellery recently said: “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.”
Woodwindsman Lewis Evans also recently spoke to NME about the pressure of writing a new record.
“I definitely felt pressure from it for sure, because just purely statistically, [‘Ants From Up There’] was so well rated,” he said. “But once we started writing, I didn’t really feel the pressure because I knew that deep quality was there.”
This style of writing, Evans said, also “definitely has a pop mentality to it. Just trying to make songs that are catchy and likeable but have a deep-set weirdness about them: that’s my favourite kind of music.”
Drummer Charlie Wayne also spoke about working with James Ford on the record.
“We wanted to create something that felt maximalist,” he said. “We didn’t want to limit ourselves by just playing six instruments – we wanted to do whatever felt interesting or fun. James was the perfect guy to facilitate that; he made everything extremely easy and gave voice to every single idea.”
The band will hit the road for a series of UK, Ireland and European tour dates kicking off on September 11 at Rock City in Nottingham before wrapping up at O2 Academy Brixton on October 31. Any remaining tickets can be purchased here.
Before that the band will play a host of festival dates including Primavera in Barcelona on June 7 and the End Of The Road festival in Dorset on August 31. You can purchase tickets for the latter here.
