Black Country, New Road share new concert film
Cambridgeshire experimenters Black Country, New Road have shared a new concert film which details three shows they played at the Bush Hall in London late last year. Each performance is comprised solely of material written after former frontman Isaac Wood left the band at the beginning of 2022.
Each show is represented by a varying visual theme and set design, which were inspired by school plays, religion and a spectral pizza place called I Ain’t Alfredo No Ghosts. The film was directed by Greg Barnes while John Parish was on mixing duty.
Discussing the new film, the band’s pianist May Kershaw said: “We didn’t want to do a studio album. We wrote the new tracks specifically to perform live, so we thought it might be a nice idea to put out a performance.” Guitarist Luke Mark also noted: “We had concerns from live sessions we’ve seen or done in the past. They are very obviously clumped together visually from multiple performances. That can take you out of the performance and make it seem artificial and like it’s not actually live”.
Mark added: “So we came up with the idea to make the three nights look visually distinct from one another. To scratch the idea of trying to disguise anything. We wanted it to be very honest and let people know that we had three goes at it. This isn’t just us playing the whole thing nonstop”.
The film is the first material the band has released since they put out the Ants From Up There album just after Isaac Wood departed. Saxophonist Lewis Evans noted the different themes of the shows: “We came up with fake plays, wrote a fake synopsis, dressed as the characters, and made programs and sets for each play. It was really exciting and made it a lot more fun.”
Check out the film below.
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