Recorded between Berlin and Baltimore, Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! is the experimental rockers' first album to feature vocals, and follows 2022's Comradely Objects. It builds out Horse Lords' core lineup of Owen Gardner, Max Eilbacher, Sam Haberman, and Andrew Bernstein with bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone, trombonist Weston Olencki, and vocalists Nina Guo and Evelyn Saylor.
Alex Ian Smith, the primary force behind the New York-based project Railings, sounds nothing like Cobain, but his voice induces similarly vicarious listening. In " Breaking the Bong," the opening track of Railings' 2017 album, ) (, he darts from guttural highs to velvety lows and then breaks into an effortlessly clear falsetto. It warrants the most preposterous-sounding comparisons: Prince meets David Lee Roth; David Thomas with the lung capacity of Benny "The Voice" Mardones.
It's right there in the title of the first track, "Vegetation Grows Thick," whose textures feel like mutant organic tissue. With dusty hip-hop drums straightened out and sped up, it feels a bit like an old Mo' Wax record left in a damp attic until it grew mold in its grooves-humid, buzzed, and a little blissed-out in its spongy transformation. It's a head rush grounded in the earth, electronics running through soil and sending messages to god knows where.
In a world that almost exclusively worships solo artists, it seems strange and almost anachronistic to see six musicians arrive together to give an interview. But Black Country, New Road aren't known for going with the flow. Formed in Cambridge, they have established themselves as one of the most magnetic and unclassifiable British bands of their generation. Their approach combines experimental rock with the sensibility of a chamber sextet, shot through with echoes of spectral folk and a lyrical ambition that has become their trademark.