Grade: A
Is that a kind of nod to Oasis in the album title? I can’t think of a band less like that grunting Manc convocation, except in the fact that BCNR are just about the biggest band in the country right now, as the Gallagher bros were all those years ago.
Vocalist (of a sort) Isaac Wood has left and with him has gone the occasional temptations to stray into stadium bombast, à la Arcade Fire. Instead, with three females sharing vocals, we have evanescent chamber pop, occasionally buttressed by a certain glam swagger, almost always underpinned by plucked acoustic guitar and May Kershaw’s superb and imaginative piano. It is a beautiful album, from the sweet harmonies of ‘Besties’, to the Revolver-era McCartney of ‘Mary’.
As you might have hoped – if you know the band – some of these off-kilter melodies take a while to resolve themselves and on one or two occasions lose their way entirely, such as on the Nick Drakeish ‘Nancy Tries To Take The Night’. Then, just momentarily, they begin to sound like fey, well-bred, proggish folk-jazz refugees from the late 1960s Canterbury scene, a kind of a dislocated Kevin Ayers. But for the most part these are cleverly constructed and astonishingly well executed baroque-pop songs, the best of the crop being the dream-pop of ‘Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me)’, the aforementioned ‘Besties’ and ‘Happy Birthday’ with its cute Mick Ronson guitar. Some of the songs stretch to nigh on seven minutes, but even so, rarely outstay their welcome. There is not much in the way of, uh, rocking out, it has to be said.
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