Black Country new road
The 30 Best Albums of 2022 (So Far)
The following acts released quality albums in May 2022 alone: Radiohead off-shoot The Smile, Kendrick Lamar, Wilco, Arcade Fire, Sharon Van Etten, The Black Keys, Florence + the Machine, Harry Styles — we’ll stop there for space reasons. It’s been such a wild music year so far, only some of them made the following list. Maybe 2022 was just front-loaded and the final six months will be less eventful. (Judging by the release calendar, that’s probably a bad prediction.) Either way, we had trouble even narrowing this down to 30. Let’s meet back here at year’s end and see how things shake out. 30. Caracara – New Preoccupations Fans of classic 2000s emo — Say Anything, Dashboard Confessional, or Circa Survive, for example — are sure to find something to love in Caracara’s New Preoccupations (and...
Black Country, New Road Don’t Care If You Hate Their Ambitious New LP
“We knew that people weren’t going to like it,” says Black Country, New Road‘s Lewis Evans. “And [now] I know that people won’t like it.” It doesn’t read like a ringing endorsement of Ants From Up There, the recently issued second album from the British sextet. But the saxophonist correctly insists it’s the “best thing [they’ve] ever done” — a more mature song cycle that broadens the emotional range of 2021’s For the First Time. Where that acclaimed debut relied heavily on deadpan speak-sing snark and brooding post-punk riffs, Ants is often bright and opened-armed, landing somewhere between ornate art-rock and Arcade Fire-sized chamber-pop. They’ve always had style to spare — now they have heart. “One of the main aims of the second album was to explore, first of all, more ...
The 50 Best Rock Bands Right Now
First, let’s take care of the obvious. Despite the still-persistent narrative that such music is “dead,” there are way more than 50 excellent rock bands out there. And there’s no exact science to scooping the cream of the crop. Our list includes arena-packing veterans but also semi-obscure indie acts who’ve barely escaped their basements. There are no hard rules here. Our methodology was simple: ask our writers and staff which rock bands feel worthy of recognition right now. But we did aim for a wide scope — throughout, you’ll find flavors of psych, post-punk, hardcore, metal, even country. If it feels like rock, it’s on the table. Consider SPIN‘s 2021 roundup — just like last year’s — a thermometer, taking the temperature of modern rock in all its various mutations. Altın Gün Ho...
Black Country, New Road Announce Second Album Ants From Up There, Share ‘Chaos Space Marine’
One of our favorite rising bands, Black Country, New Road will release their second record Ants From Up There on February 4, 2022. On top of that announcement, the British rockers dropped its first single “Chaos Space Marine.” The news comes exactly a year after the release of their debut, For the first time. The first record proved the band’s post-rock and indie chops, and we can expect that Ants From Up There shows an expansion of their sound and a concoction of minimalism, indie-folk, and pop. Frontman Isaac Wood said the track is the best Black Country, New Road song yet. “We threw in every idea anyone had with that song,” Wood said. “So the making of it was a really fast, whimsical approach – like throwing all the shit at the wall and just letting everything stick.” [embedded content]...
