English indie band Black Country, New Road (BCNR) released their 4th studio album Forever Howlong on April 4th, 2025. The album is a bright and ambitious project with a clear steer towards avant-pop music.
Filled with highly regarded masterpieces of melancholic rock music, BCNR’s past is prolific. Forever Howlong shows a clear shift in sound, with less focus on guitars and more on violins, pianos and vocals. The varied instrumentation makes the album feel like it’s constantly growing and evolving. The opening track, “Besties” is filled with vibrant vocals and instruments, including a harpsichord in the intro.
Forever Howlong is comparatively a much brighter and happier album than the rest of BCNR’s discography. Keeping with their tradition, the band utilizes multiple lead singers throughout the album and even within the same songs. Bassist Tyler Hyde has the more emotional songs, such as “Socks” and “Happy Birthday,” the latter being an eccentric rock and roll song with heavy lyrics and distorted guitars.
Pianist May Kershaw sings the inspirational songs on the album, such as “For the Cold Country,” which starts slow and builds up into an exciting end. Violinist Georgia Ellery, singing for the first time in the band, had some of the best songs on the album, including “Besties,” “Two Horses,” and “Goodbye (dont tell it to me).” Her songs were bright and vibrant while maintaining an emotional core.
A unique aspect of this album is the lack of long, intense songs. All of the previous albums from BCNR featured at least one song that was over nine minutes long, often being the emotional crux and highlight of the album, such as “Turbines” and “Basketball Shoes.”Forever Howlong is their first departure from this tradition, although multiple songs do crack the 6-minute mark.
Forever Howlong is an album for music lovers. It blends genres with hints of progressive and alternative rock while also having an overall jazz-pop feel and theme. It can transform based on the mood of the listener; it is a chameleon of an album. Forever Howlong is for those who want to listen to something they’ve never heard before.