Answering a video call from his bedroom, Black Country, New Road drummer Charlie Wayne is feeling “slightly weird”. He’s in limbo, caught in the timewarp between creating a new record and getting to perform it.

Many of the band’s dedicated followers will be feeling a similar sense of nervous anticipation. Forever Howlong will be BC, NR’s first studio album since lead vocalist Isaac Woods left in 2022, four days before the release of their sophomore effort, Ants From Up There.

Wayne notes that “the songwriting has always been a collaborative effort from the start”, though the group had nonetheless lost a creative valve responsible for the stirring lyrics and intense vocals that earned them so many plaudits.

Out of respect for their former bandmate, the remaining members decided they would no longer perform either of their hitherto released albums live. When Wayne – as well as Tyler Hyde, Lewis Evans, Georgia Ellery, May Kershaw and Luke Mark – hit the road again, an entirely new setlist was written. Three nights of that tour in London were subsequently recorded for their 2023 Live At Bush Hall LP.

“We’ve been writing together as a band for like such a long time, so the foundations had been laid,” Wayne says. “When Isaac left, we were always going to carry on in some way. It wasn’t apparent what it was going to be at the time. I guess Bush Hall was a way of figuring it out. It was a good exercise.”

Wood cited mental health issues as his reasons for stepping down. Did his exit make the rest of the band question their mental wellbeing amid the music industry?

“Massively,” says Wayne. “It’s a really weird job to have. That’s part of the reason we had multiple singers in the first place, to alleviate some of the responsibility, stress or isolation on one person. The industry is extremely weird and I think that you never really get to grips with it. We’ve navigated it together in a very particular way

“Having six of us dilutes things. It makes decision-making slightly hard, we talk about stuff a lot, but it makes touring much easier. It makes performing and writing more interesting. I couldn’t imagine touring as a solo artist. I think I’d hate it.”

Bush Hall was a testament to the band’s ability to push on and adapt. Part of that owes to them being classically trained musicians, who are well used to playing with each other.

BC, NR will also say they were anchored by the close interpersonal bonds they’ve formed over the years. Friendship is a recurring theme on Forever Howlong. Described by Wayne as a “sort of second debut”, the album is baroque, spritely and joyously creative, though never guilty of being saccharine.

It has its darker moments too. ‘Salem Sisters’ is a meticulous and claustrophobic depiction of a barbeque to which any introvert will relate. Throw in some burrowing hooks and cascading harmonies, and you’ve got one of the most beautiful tunes to come out of your headphones all year.

“Some of the music that came before was extremely dark and dour, but I think it depends on what kind of context you listen to it in,” Wayne says. “Musically, Forever Howlong is definitely a bit more whimsical than stuff we’ve done before. But we’ve still done some extremely whimsical stuff in the past. So in comparison to that, it nestles fairly comfortably. I also think that the saddest music can sound really happy. Pet Sounds is one of the most depressing albums of all time, and it’s lovely to listen to on a sunny day.”

“For me it’s like an interesting insight into the big and small parts of life that we’ve all lived together in the last three or four years,” he continues. “The way in which these everyday, boring parts of life are expanded into these universal experiences is really cool. I like the way that fantasy worlds can be condensed into these small stories and still feel relatable.”

Black County, New Road. Photo: Eddie Whelan.

Forever Howlong's writing process also called for more lyrical contributions from the various band members.

“It was coming from lots of different angles,” says Wayne. “Tyler’s writing style is quite different from May’s or Georgia’s. Collaborating in that context, when everyone’s coming from a slightly different angle, was a bit of a learning curve.”

BC, NR rarely shy away from testing their limits, chucking in a mishmash of eclectic sounds on the album. Some went as far as learning new instruments.

“I mean, you gotta earn a paycheck,” quips Wayne. “We are in an extremely fortunate position where everyone in the band is able to play more than one instrument. We lent into that.

“With ‘Forever Howlong’, apart from Lewis and Tyler, none of us could play the recorder. So it really factored into how we were actually arranging. You can hear it in terms of the structure of the song. It starts off simply and then it expands out.

“That’s not an accident. It’s because we couldn’t play the recorder to start, and then, as we got better, the song became more complicated. Those limitations are really good creative tools.”

Facilitating the experimentation was James Ford, the producer behind much of Arctic Monkeys’ catalogue, as well as Fontaines D.C’s Romance.

“Arctic Monkeys were one of the first bands – that weren’t a chart band, or from the ‘60s or ‘70s – that I loved,” Wayne says. “It would probably make James feel extremely old, but he was one of the first producers that I ever really knew about. His reputation preceded him, but we were a bit hesitant because we never worked with a producer and there are certain connotations with it.

“After a chat with him, we realised he was perfect for the project. He was extremely comfortable with everything that we were asking from him. We really needed someone who knew the ins and outs of the studio, and could provide lots of options and could record in lots of different ways. He was like a Swiss Army knife.

“He worked 16-hour days for three-and-a-half weeks, it was completely nuts. You could see why he is such an in-demand producer.”

BC, NR are no slouches themselves. Forming in Cambridge, they later became associated with South London’s ‘Windmill scene’, named after the Brixton venue where a flurry of avant-garde post-punk acts like Squid, Black Midi and Shame got their start.

Top of the class were Wayne and co., who’ve become drenched in the sort of critical acclaim and street cred that every hipster with a Fender and a penchant for jazz chords dreams of. Did the wave of five-star reviews ever inflate any egos within the band?

“Personally I became much nastier to my friends and family,” he says, sarcastically. “It’s really weird because the music scene is a bit of a microcosm. It’s amazing that people really like the music, that is extremely cool. I’m very grateful for it. But it’s not like I can’t leave my house. Most of the people that love the music are online, so we’ve received a bunch of acclaim, but it always exists in this slightly abstract space.

“There was so much interesting music going on at the Windmill before we started playing there,” Wayne continues. “The first time I went and thought about it as a ‘scene’ was seeing Black Midi, and being like, ‘Wow, these guys are the best band I’ve ever seen in my life’. It was extremely disappointing, because at that period of time, we were fairly convinced we were the best band of all time.

“It was amazing because they’re the same age as us. We had the same booking agent. And when we got rolling, they were getting rolling at the same time and it felt really cool. We never really played with Black Midi at the Windmill, other than charity stuff. I guess the Windmill is the synecdoche which refers to a lot of other venues around London where we were playing, like the Shacklewell Arms, Lock Tavern, or the Montague Arms.”

Speaking of charity matters, BC, NR organised a gig to raise funds for Medical Aid For Palestinians and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund in London last June.

“As a person, you’re allowed to use your voice however you feel is necessary or important,” he says. “It was necessary for us. We’ve never really categorised ourselves as a ‘political’ band. But we are just a bunch of people with opinions and it seemed like a pretty good use of our resources to elevate something extremely important. It’s a no-brainer when it’s medical aid for people in the most dire situation on the planet.”

It’s admirable for artists to use their platforms for just causes. Still, the responsibility to usher peace doesn’t fall on their shoulders.

“It’s so deeply politicised in ways which make it feel so perverse and so wrong. It is complicated in the UK. I think that the government has really deep connections and massive colonial responsibilities to the situation across the world, and specifically in the Middle East, and more specifically in Israel and Palestine.

“So they are caught in what I think is an indefensible position of supporting a country both financially and militarily, in ways that I find extremely unpleasant.”

• Forever Howlong is out now.