(((O))) Live: Black Country, New Road – O2 Brixton Academy

It’s Halloween night, and if I had missed the face-painted tube travellers, the gory décor along Brixton’s shop-windows, or the many faux-bleeding passers-by on the way to this Black Country, New Road pop-up shop, the rather sweet pumpkins on its bar-side would be a nice clue. One is carved with the ‘BC,NR’ initial logo, another with a many-pronged star, and the last with that cool-guy, flame-eyed smiley face from the cover of their latest LP, Forever Howlong. The shop has already sold out of most of their themed wares – a forward hint to the fervency of the band’s sizeable following, already out and queuing for the gig – so with a snap of the pumpkins and a quick drink I’m on my way to the Academy.

Admittedly, I’m not often a big gig-goer – a very frequent goer, yes, but they’re usually smallish-capacity club or pub affairs – I’ve only been to the Brixton Academy once before. The shame! That one previous time had not at all prepared me for, despite my uncharacteristically laid-back arrival at bang-on doors time, having to queue around several blocks to enter. I was thrilled by both the anticipation built and the mini tour of some choice residential roads.

Another almost-new experience here – my ticket is a seated one. From the balcony, the venue’s dressing can be properly marvelled at. Especially as more and more costumed attendees scoot in, you’re in a Midsummer Night’s Dream style hanging garden up there, all grapevines and columns and (somehow, achieved inside) vast night sky.

Supporting the night first is Pete Um, a ‘tape poet’ that sandwiches together spongy, leaven synth melodies, crispy drum machine, and the relish of some strange/beautiful lyrics. It’s minimalist, as his lone figure at a desk in the corner of the stage would suggest soundlessly, but inviting. He’s at once showcasing a sly humour and stark existentialism; in the same breath he damns Ed Sheeran and questions the nature of creativity.

 

Evidently, it’s started chucking it down outside, as the witches, skeletons, Bowies and… minions coming in now are sodden and dripping makeup in a trail behind them.

Next on support is Blue Bendy. In their horns / ears / pointy hat, they’ve gone for a more trad Halloween look than some of the crowd. Vocalist Arthur Nolan is instrument-free and so, in cloak and hat, goes roaming and gesticulating about the stage as far as the generous microphone wire allows, casting a swooping, steepled shadow. Dressed and acting as the spearhead, Nolan in no time has the crowd rapt. Blue Bendy’s sound is as earnest as a teenager’s love note, but as self-deprecating, self-aware, and self-referential as a very jaded 20-something. Sonically, it combines hands-in-pockets shuffle-y rhythms, twinkly pianos and finger-style guitars, with the unnerve of an occasional moment of discord, whistling alien synth, or sudden explosion of power. I don’t know where their name comes from, but abstractly their sound is blue and bendy. It floats up to the balcony and coaxes me to buy merch.

 

Before the headliners themselves take to the stage, I see Taylor Skye take a seat nearby. Half of the duo Jockstrap, (the other half being Black Country, New Road member Georgia Ellery) Skye is a reminder, should I have needed it, of the absurd scope and prolificacy of the talent that fills (and indeed, spills over from) BC,NR.

The lights dim, anticipatory squeals break out and take-to-the-stage music plays from tape. It’s Fontaines D.C.’s ‘Starburster’. A projection on the back curtain: Fontaines D.C.’s logo. And on walk… Fontaines D.C. Or rather, with a bit of strain from my high-up eyes, Black Country, New Road in meticulous Fontaines costumes. If they weren’t endeared to the crowd before (they absolutely were), committing to wearing bad wigs for their biggest and likely most-photographed gig yet would easily do it. The “Fontaines” part of the logo projection flickers, disappears, and is replaced by “AC”; they’re double-disguised for Halloween, and the Fontaine-d BC,NR launch into AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’. Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly after this matryoshka doll entrance, it suits them down to the ground, and the crowd wholly embrace it, singing and cheering riotously. The cover concludes with a cheeky “Happy Halloween”, the projected logo bursting into that of BC,NR, and a Hammer Horror cackle.

We’re one, not even original, song in, and the real joy fostered within this fanbase is already palpable. Perhaps it’s the whimsy in bringing instruments like the mandolin, accordion and tenor recorder into a band, or just how much fun the members always look and sound like they’re having, but BC,NR aren’t an act you can easily be sad listening to. Tonight is a strangely costumed celebration of this oddball community, the community that they have built up and out from The Windmill [barely one mile up the road] into the modern sonic zeitgeist.

They play, reordered, all of their acclaimed Forever Howlong, and even to us seated and flight-hoisted, it reaches like a warm arm across the shoulders. Dotted in are a couple more covers: The Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint It Black’, perfectly transposed for their roster of instruments, and Angelo Badalamenti’s ‘Falling’, which, though everyone went wild for, I’m sure particularly appealed to the Log Lady that I saw in the foyer.

Props to the lighting department; the scope of BC,NR’s projected sound is unerringly translated as far-flung yellows, pinks and purples that flood and swell, wane and chop, in perfect synchronicity with the music. Each powerful moment of drum, sax, violin, piano, and vocal, unfurls itself as a stem tendril, leaf or bud, before bursting forth into the kind of blooms that reignite your belief in spring after snow. Were they not so endearing, playful, grinning, then the way each member takes it in turn to shine bright in the sonic (and literal) spotlight would be infuriatingly envy-making. But this isn’t a recital or an exhibition, it’s a merry embrace; the crowd are applauding witness to what these six people on stage were born to do.

It’s difficult to accurately describe the sound of BC,NR to the uninitiated, especially as an unmusical punter, largely because it’s so their own. All I can say is it should be in your ears, because as fast as it is in your ears, it is in your heart. The joy grown in the gig is strong enough to hold out into the rainy October streets, being ushered loudly across roads by a theatrically inclined Academy staff member, laughing in our wet, costumed bundles, slipping and sliding back to the tube station as some dry ghosts in a bus window glide past, unhearing.