Black Country, New Road on 2000s indie, the Windmill, and Their Passionate Fanbase

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OK, let's get down to business: Black Country, New Road are quite possibly one of the decade's most surprising success stories, and I mean that as a total compliment. They inspire passionate opinions and are constantly making music that feels very much like it's true to themselves, and that goes triple for their new album Forever Howlong, which very pleasingly reminds me a lot of the kitchen-sink indie-pop I was raised on in the mid-2000s. Where they've arrived at is light years from where they started, and I was very pleased to hop on a call with band members Georgia Ellery, Charlie Wayne, and Luke Mark about their incredible trajectory so far and how they've managed to keep it real. Check it out:

I thought it was very interesting that, before this new record, you were playing an entire set's worth of new material—essentially road-testing music, which I don't hear bands do too often these days.
Luke: It's interesting with us, because if you hear that about a band you might expect they do a lot of improvising and long-form jam-oriented stuff—but that's not the case. We've never really written in an improvisatory format. So it's a bit of an oddity that we do it, I guess it's kind of weird.

With us, we're always excited to play the new songs. It's probably partly because we haven't managed to tour either of our studio albums properly so far, so we've never really had the experience of playing an album that an audience has connected with. That element of people singing back at you and waiting for their favorite song has been slightly curbed for us, so the fact that the pull isn't there means like we're ready to play new stuff, and we're not necessarily bending to the audience's preference quite as much.

Do you think you guys are going to do the same thing while touring off of this new record?
Charlie: I think it'll probably be a mix. I'd be unbelievably shocked if we go eight months without playing a brand new song, or changing an old song. If we have any rehearsal time that's longer than a couple of weeks, we'll try and make the space to write like new material and play it within a different context. It's been a practical reality of making live shows consistently fun and interesting.

When we toured Bush Hall, we toured it so extensively in playing the same set every single evening that there was such a desire for change. We're always wanting to do something new to keep it fresh and interesting. Also, a lot of bands still do it. I've seen Big Thief a bunch of times, and every single time they've played new stuff, even if it's just Adrienne Lenker playing solo. It's quite fun to even see that. I remember seeing her play "Sadness is a Gift" the year before it came out and being like, "Wow, this song's amazing," and instantly connecting with it.

Luke: The way they do it is really cool, actually. Remember when we went to see them at Hammersmith?

Charlie: It was Shepherd's Bush.

Luke: Oh yeah, I didn't go to the Hammersmith gig. But they fucked up a song—it just wasn't working—and they just stopped playing it and Adrienne was like, "Buck, how about you play your new song?" Then he plays this amazing solo number and no one else accompanies him, and you know it's never going to be a Big Thief song, but they're playing it at a Big Thief show just because the music feels right then, and I think that's cool.

Well, one thing you guys and Big Thief have in common is a fairly devoted fan base that will follow you even as you are pushing into new territory—which defined a lot of 2000s indie rock as a whole. I talked to Tapir! recently about that era's influence on them, what's the impression it made on you guys as listeners?
Luke: You can hear that in Tapir!'s stuff, can't you? We've played a few shows with them, they're a great band. We're pretty into that stuff as well. Some of us are particularly deep in that world-ish. We're also slightly too young to have been around at the peak of that stuff. I loved it, but it was something I discovered when I was probably, like, 16—so that was, like, 2014. But that's the time when you should discover that music, I guess—when you're a teenager.

There's a parallel scene in the UK with indie bands like Arctic Monkeys and shit—the Libertines, Bloc Party—and that's had a bit of a resurgence for a lot of people over the last four or five years. I was in a café earlier, and they were playing Bloc Party—that's kind of weird, you wouldn't have heard that a few years ago, I don't think. The more synth-y 2014 sound took over when we were teenagers and people forgot about that stuff, but it's kind of come back.

We definitely grew up listening to Arctic Monkeys, and I loved the Libertines when I was a teenager. But I love Animal Collective, Deerhoof, Broken Social Scene, stuff like that—the Unicorns, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. That ilk of indie, I love the emotion and youthful exuberance, but the slightly downcast take on it is definitely something I connect with.

Georgia, what's your relationship with 2000s indie rock as a listener? Georgia: Well, I don't know some of the bands that you guys were just talking about. I was just listening to Lady Gaga. I can't really think of any 200s indie rock, I'd have to look at what came out in what year and then I'd be able to tell you.

Charlie: Were you into Arctic Monkeys and stuff like that?

Georgia: I don't think so. I joined on for Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. I was, like, listening to Passion Pit. Is that around the same time?

Luke: That's kind of what I was talking about with the bit in between. The indie shit I was talking about became uncool when Passion Pit took over. That was our era, though, you know?

Charlie: It's sort of strange. That whole scene, Mac DeMarco kind of put a pin in it and completely changed things. The big rock bands that were around were, like, the Vaccines—which, do with that information what you will.

Georgia: What do they call it now? Landfill indie?

Charlie: Yeah. We were 11 and 12, and that was, like, the Made in Chelsea soundtrack. It wasn't until I was a bit older that I got into, like, Animal Collective.

Luke: Also, Georgia, the whole thing that I was talking about before where there's a British parallel with stuff that wasn't quite as big in America—the whole Camden vibe that includes, like Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen. That was all the same era, where that sound was really cool.

Georgia: Oh, okay. Well, we listened to all of those.

Charlie: There's the pop end of it, where there's some artists who are very English-sounding.

Luke: They probably didn't really crack the U.S.—definitely not the blog rock vibe. They definitely didn't transcend into that world, but they're all from a similar era and have an adjacent sound.

You guys have been a part of another very distinct shift when it comes to British indie. Last year, I talked to Geordie Greep about the notion of emerging from a scene—specifically, the Windmill-slash-Speedy-Wunderground grouping that you guys and a lot of other bands have found yourselves put in, whether you asked for it or not. How've you guys perceived your place in the greater British music community, given all of that?
Charlie: It's weird. In some ways, there definitely was an atmosphere surrounding it, which kind of made sense—the idea of a scene. We're mates with everyone in black midi, and that continues to be the case. Musically, there was some overlap in terms of shared identity, but that's only diverged and continues to diverge.

But the idea of a scene is sort of weird. I still think about it in quite a childish way,—the Camden scene in the noughties. That's obviously surrounded by like a mythology, but it wasn't like we were all going to each other's houses and having massive blowouts. The idea of scene implies that there's something a bit more substantial than just being mates.

Georgia: People call it a scene because it existed around a venue.

Charlie: Yeah, I guess that's true. But then even—like, I was speaking to Cameron from black midi about Squid's new album, and he was like, "It's sort of weird that people think about Squid in this scene, because I don't even know whether they played at the Windmill—and if they did, I never saw them." I've seen them personally at, like, one or two gigs. But I guess people throw Fontaines DC and stuff like that into the same mix. I don't know. It's difficult to quantify.

Georgia: It definitely made for a really exciting environment—playing at the Windmill, on a lineup with black midi or, other bands that you had no idea what they were going to sound like. It felt very exciting to me, and a good community because [Tim Perry] puts anything on. He's kind of a selector at this point, so you can go to be like, "Oh, I wonder what he's putting on." I did feel like I was part of a community, which is a nice feeling. And there's lots of scenes where the music's different.

Charlie: That's true. I mean, it definitely does exist. I'm not totally disregarding it. I was thinking aloud, because it definitely is a thing, and everyone does sort of know each other. Lots of people are mutual friends with me, with other musicians. It's not as though we exist in isolation. It's just one of those things which feels weird to speak about in terms an actual thing, when it's something that people outside of it describe it as.

That makes sense. It's kind of like, if you have a group of friends, and somebody else is like, "Oh, that's your group of friends," and you're like, "I don't know what you're talking about—they're just people I hang out with."
Charlie: Exactly, yes. I will say that I definitely prefer it to be called "the Windmill scene" than, like, Crank Wave or like Post-Brexit or whatever the fuck other people have called it, which I think is rubbish.

Georgia, I'd love to hear you talk about taking lead vocal duties on this record and what that experience was like for you.
Georgia: The experience was nice. I had to figure out what sort of things to write for the band and how it would sound arranged—which only gets you so far, to be honest. But I began to feel like I was cracking it. The songs I've written before, I couldn't necessarily imagine for Black Country New Road, so that was a fun challenge. I can have quite clear ideas of how I want things to sound, so I'm sure that meant that it something's changed. The different songwriters all had to do things differently. We had to respond to the songs, the lyrics, and what the style of the writer was like. Figuring that out took a bit of time for all of us, but it was a really nice, active, creative thing to be doing, and I felt good.

Being in a band as big as yours requires a lot of relationship management. What's the conflict resolution tactics like in Black Country, New Road?
Georgia: We've been through quite a lot together, so we've got quite a lot of experiences going through traumatic things. [Laughs] At this point, we just really try to look out for each other and be respectful of when people are having a hard time—making sure that no one feels like, if they're having a bad time, they can't commit or engage creatively or something's too much, they can take their time and we have their back when it comes to industry stuff. At this point, I think our communication is pretty good, which helps creatively as well.

We work democratically—there's no leader, so we vote on things and go with majority or consensus, but we always try and hear it all out until until we have to make a decision on something. For the track list, we came to the consensus that we would have two different track lists instead of just one, because we couldn't really make the decision confidently.

Luke: It's democratic, but everyone has veto power as well. At the end of the day, if it's five against one and the one person is actually really not happy with it, then we still won't do it without trying to find another way, even if it's just 10 seconds of a song.

Let's talk about the financial aspects of Black Country, New Road.
Charlie: For a start, we are a six-piece alternative—maybe not so experimental anymore, but definitely have been an experimental rock band at times, in a genre that's not anywhere near as large as it maybe was 20 or 30 years ago. The fact that this is all our full-time jobs is something that's maybe worth observing in the first place. We're extremely lucky, and that's not lost on any of us. It's been my job since I left university four or five years ago, which does still feel kind of nuts.

It's still a pretty rare thing that I don't have to necessarily think about supplementing my income with other musical stuff. It's not the reality for lots of musicians. It's a pretty harsh industry, and obviously you're aware of the fact that the whole thing is always slightly teetering on whether people want to listen to you enough, if festival bookers want to book you, or if people will want to buy tickets to like see your shows.You can't necessarily bring that into your creative output, because you'll inevitably end up making stuff that's not necessarily authentic or good. It's strange, we're definitely in a lucky position.

Luke: We've made money mostly from playing shows, so it's very apparent to us that we have a job because of the band's fans. There's a lot of bands who came up around the same time as us who work with major labels or subsidiaries and did deals where most of their money is coming up front. That's not really our experience. We got good enough deals that we knew we could make albums the way we wanted to, which is pretty amazing to begin with—but it's not like we got like a shitload of money all in one go.

You play the shows and see all the people supporting you, and it's very evident every time that this is what's supporting us and letting us make our living. So far, we've been extremely lucky with that. I mean, we've done a lot of shows, and it's been exhausting at times—but I don't know if that's a particularly common experience. Most people are trying to do multiple musical projects to try and keep their career going, and the fact that we've managed to get lucky enough that we funnel everything into this has been quite unusual.

Your fanbase is very passionate. When we started setting up this interview, I was told by your publicist that they couldn't share the full album with me for a bit because they were afraid of fans leaking the record—which is something I don't hear much from teams repping bands like yours these days. What's that experience been like? As someone who likes your band a lot, I'm not surprised people like your music, but I do find myself surprised sometimes by which bands end up generating so much interest.
Charlie: It's weird, but it's also slightly abstract as well, because it's online and you can choose whether or not to engage with it—and it's often best not to. I've definitely been burned by it, because it is obviously nuts that people care so much about your music that you that they're willing to spend any part of their day doing more than just listening to it. It's extremely cool, in some ways, but those attachments are kind of parasocial. [The listeners] can feel really connected to some parts of the music, which is more than anything that we can necessarily relate to or even give to a fan base—so it's best left to stew.

It's weird. It's an extremely good thing, because it means that you have a job—and it's also a really difficult thing to know what to actually do with, or whether to engage with it or even spend time properly like thinking about it, because it can make you feel like a bit nuts at the same time.

Luke: Yeah, it's a bit scary—the fact that people, in theory, have access to you online. My personal social media, people can come at me on there and find me if they want to send me messages and comment on all my stuff where I talk to my friends in real life. That's kind of weird. But then sometimes you meet someone who comes to a show, and they're really lovely, and they're like, "I'm from Twitter or whatever back in the day," and you replied to them one time and they're so nice and appreciative, and it feels like a really lovely community because you see that they've gone to the show with other people that they've met on the fan forum or Reddit or whatever. That's always really epic, because you see these people who are like they're now friends in real life because of the band, which is the coolest bit of it to me.

Charlie: Yeah, I totally agree. That's amazing.

Luke: That happens in the U.S. a lot, actually, and I love that aspect of it. Sometimes, as Charlie was alluding to, you get people who feel like they have some stake in the music beyond just like being a fan of it, because they've been around for so long and we've tried their patience a little bit with doing whatever we want. I think that's completely understandable, but at the same time it can be a bit scary—but, at the same time it makes it all the more satisfying that people actually have stuck through it all.

When you get to play to them or see people buying our album—even when there's only one song out, which is really different from what we put out before—that feels really amazing. It feels like a once-in-a-lifetime thing. That just doesn't happen to people, like, at all—unless you're a major-label-fiddling-the-numbers vibe and you get this sudden crazy fan base like Sabrina Carpenter or something. It's a weird little bubble that we managed to get in.

Charlie: We also operate on a micro version of that. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be someone like Chappell Roan. Obviously she's gone down a route where it seems like she's trying to stick to her guns as much as possible, but within a major-label framework. She was in the trailer next to us when we played Coachella last year, just before she went to the fucking moon. That must be completely nuts, going from playing support slots to playing to 50,000 people within 18 months. It's certainly fucking mental. But even as it goes up to her scale, the community around her is even more crazy. I'm sure she fucking loves doing shows and seeing how much everyone is together in that room.