Cambridgeshire 6 piece group Black Country, New Road is new to the scene, but already making a buzz. They released their first full-length last year with ‘For the First Time’, which met a good amount of acclaim including a Mercury Prize nomination (no small feat), and have followed it up with this year’s ‘Ants from Up There’. Despite the recent departure of lead guitarist and vocalist Isaac Wood, the band is forging on and road-testing exclusively new material.

Singing duties have half fallen to bassist Tyler Hyde, and their first song Up Song showed how competent she can be. It also showed the band’s continuing butterfly in a field of flowers approach to song construction, always flirting from one flower to the next, never content to stay any one place too long.

Their second song The Boy was narratively structured like chapters in a book and the whimsical nature of the song and lyrics complimented pianist Met Kershaw’s beautiful but timid singing voice. The following set of songs were equally dynamic, but all quite somber and lacking a bit of klezmer dynamism.

Their last song Dancers showed the band in a swelling and slightly brighter place, still dark but pushing towards the light. The jerking staccato stabs were the part that made the song start working, if only there had been more of them. The refrain grew and grew till it became almost an anthem, and was the most powerful part of their set.

This new, post Isaac Wood sound had a much more melancholic through-line than their previous work, more somber but still compelling. There was an x-factor the band had yet to find, a playfulness, but restructuring the way that they have had to can’t be easy. Here’s hoping they keep working at it and that they push the klezmer!