At a time when most bands cling tightly to a signature sound, Black Country, New Road seem determined to dismantle theirs at every opportunity. At the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, the London collective arrive not as the post-punk provocateurs who earned a Mercury nod for For the First Time, nor as the wounded romantics of Ants From Up There, but as something else entirely. Again.
Support comes from Way Dynamic, whose set provides a bracing counterpoint. Where BC,NR are intricate and measured, Way Dynamic are kinetic and bright-edged.
Backseat Mafia last caught BC,NR under the vaulted grandeur of the Sydney Opera House. At the Enmore, the setting is more intimate, more immediate. The reinvention feels closer to the skin.
Material drawn from Forever Howlong leans into folk textures, baroque pop flourishes and meticulous, left-field arrangement. The band’s chemistry remains the through-line: woodwinds threading through restless rhythms, piano figures collapsing into sudden surges, voices trading lines like secrets passed across a long table.
What’s most striking is the absence of nostalgia. BC,NR refuse to perform their past selves. Instead, they construct something fragile and ornate in real time, a set that feels exploratory rather than declarative. The Enmore crowd follows willingly, leaning into the quieter passages and erupting not out of obligation, but recognition.
Images Deb Pelser
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