At the sold out Barrowlands, Black Country, New Road strode on like a troupe of misfits who’ve stolen the keys to a medieval carnival and refuse to give them back. They stride confidently on stage to “Downtown” — a Petula Clark bauble turned funereal dirge, like your nan’s favourite 45 dragged down an alley and taught how to swear. From there the night lurched gloriously onwards: “Two Horses” as a runaway carriage, “Salem Sisters” hissing like a coven in the wings, “The Big Spin” rattling as if the Whacky Races had been restaged at a wake.

What’s striking is not the theatre — we already knew this lot could stage-manage their own apocalypse — but how far the theatre has metastasised. Once upon a time you could call them folk-jazz with delusions of grandeur. Now it’s as though the grandeur has eaten them alive. They’ve become a full-blown masque: operatic, grotesque, gleefully excessive. The harmonies, so precisely timed, are less sweet than sinister — a lullaby sung by siblings who’d gladly sell you to the wolves but would never sell out each other.

The absence of Isaac Wood — remember him? the band’s one-time talisman who fled just as the world anointed him their saviour — has become their greatest gift. No more messiahs, only conspirators. Tyler Hyde on bass, May Kershaw behind piano and accordion, Georgia Ellery wielding violin like a whip, Lewis Evans coaxing beauty and bile from his sax and flute, Charlie Wayne battering the kit into submission, Luke Mark on guitar stitching the whole thing together. No leaders, just a crooked parliament of sound. And thank Christ for that — the monarchy nearly killed them.

The new record, Forever Howlong, provides almost the whole set. They’ve torched the back catalogue; nostalgia is for the weak. Instead we get “Besties,” where a line like “Don’t waste your pulse on me” manages to feel like both a plea and a warning, a hymn to friendship as the last currency when everything else collapses. “For the Cold Country” howls like grief driven on a sleigh. And right in the middle they dare a cover: Big Star’s “Ballad of El Goodo,” announced with a shrug and played with such aching reverence that even the Barras, usually more interested in their pints, stood still. “It’s one of the greatest songs in rock and roll history,” they muttered — and for once no one in the room thought otherwise.

The night ended with “Forever Howlong,” a finale so stark it felt like watching your own pulse stop. The band layered flutes, accordion, whispered harmonies, until the whole room seemed suspended between prayer and panic. Then silence — heavy, stunned. This isn’t just a band playing songs. It’s six people refusing to die of heartbreak, and dragging us with them.

There’s a temptation to call this Black Country, New Road’s final form, as though they’ve completed some video-game level. In truth it’s better: they’ve burned their own blueprint and rebuilt from the ash. They are not who they were, and they never will be again — which is why they’re so bloody vital now. It’s friendship through fire, beauty wrung from disaster, a Normal People soundtrack played by demons in mourning dress.

If you want comfort, look elsewhere. If you want proof that music can still cut you open and make you grateful for the wound, this is it.

Article: Angela Canavan