#18 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Black Country, New Road

January 14, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

Forever Howlong by Black Country, New Road

Despite having been featured on the Top 31 twice in the past three years, the album at #18 should really be consider a debut studio album. Ants From Up There, the sophomore album from the original incarnation of Cambridge, England band Black Country, New Road, was featured at #11 in 2022. As I wrote in my review of that album, the band’s then lead singer, Isaac Wood, had left the band four days prior to the album’s release. His departure left the band without a front man and a full slate of 2022 festival shows to fulfill. Determined to carry on, the band threw together a full set of new songs to be sung by others in the six-piece.

Just over a year after the release of Ants, the newly defined band with their newly defined sound (they made no attempt to carry on with their Wood-led songs or to try and replace Wood’s gorgeous voice), the band released Live at Bush Hall, which landed way up at #6 in 2024. The album made a statement: we’ve moved on, and we’re even better than we were before. But a studio album it was not. In fact, the songs released on that fantastic live album will likely never be recorded in the studio.

Two years after that, the band has (hopefully?) finished redefining who they are, releasing the first studio album for this new incarnation: Forever Howlong. In place of the missing Wood, the three women in the band are now alternating on singing lead. Violinist Georgia Ellery (who is also half of the duo Jockstrap, whose lone studio release I Love You Jennifer B landed at #21 in 2022); bassist Tyler Hyde (daughter of Kyle Hyde, who is half of Top 31 alums Underworld¹); and pianist May Kershaw (whose “Turbines/Pigs” was my favorite from Bush Hall, and drove me to tears when seen live at THING 2023) each take lead on the songs whose lyrics they wrote.

Beyond the major shift in lead singing, there is very little similarity between this album and their last studio album. (On the interim live album Bush Hall, saxophonist Lewis Evans wrote and sang two songs, but he sticks to his instrument on Howlong.) I’ve been staring at the end of that last sentence for so long, trying to figure out how I would define this new era for BC,NR. The best I could come up with is “indie chamber pop prog rock,” which is, funny enough, how I’d probably define The Decemberists. But they are nothing like BC,NR, so that must be a terrible way for me to describe them.

Instead, I’ll do it the best way I can – by asking you to listen to them yourself. Check out my video from the band’s performance at the Moore Theatre back on May 24 last year, where they played the title song, “Forever Howlong.” You’ll notice the entire band are all playing tenor recorders while songwriter May Kershaw conducts from behind her keyboard. Yes, a song performed entirely with recorders, the instrument we all first learned how to play (badly) in elementary school band. Then there’s the opening track and lead single from the album, “Besties,” written by violinist Ellery. The harpsichord opening to the song is unlike anything else you’ll hear in indie rock today. “Happy Birthday” (featured in the video above), written by Hyde, is a lovely, meandering song about intergenerational discontent. And finally, I recommend watching the band’s KEXP Performance from May 2025. They perform the three songs mentioned above as well as “For the Cold Country,” also written by Kershaw.

It’s been a wild ride being a BC,NR fan for the past few years. I’ve loved every iteration of the band, and will stick with them should they decide to shuffle the deck again. But I also hope they stick with the good thing they’ve got going right now. Either way, I can’t wait to hear what they do next.

^{1. Underworld appeared at #30 in 2016 and #25 in 2024↩}

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#24 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Panda Bear

January 08, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

Sinister Grift by Panda Bear

The artist at #24 has been with the Bacon Top 31 since the very beginning. Panda Bear, whose real name is Noah Lennox, is a founding and current member of Animal Collective, whose 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion was #3 in 2009 and is likely the album I’ve listened to the most from that year’s top 10. (Does that make Merriweather the actual best album of 2009? Likely. But that’s a discussion for another day.)

Born in 1978, Panda Bear started producing music at 21/22 years old, with the release of his self-titled debut album in 1999. His first official album with Animal Collective is their debut album, Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished¹ from the year 2000. Since then, Lennox and his Animal Collective friends have been making music together and in various combinations of solo, duos, and triples ever since. In addition to the 12 albums Animal Collective have released, Panda Bear has released eight other albums, putting him at a pace of roughly three albums every four years for the past 26 years.

That is one hell of a pace for a person to be creating music. Granted, not one of those albums since the release of Merriweather has broken into the Top 31 until now. But to have been making music practically non-stop since 2000 and to still create something unexpected, relevant, and pleasing 26 years later is a huge accomplishment.

Sinister Grift, Panda Bear’s eighth official solo album, is pure joy, and unmistakably Panda Bear. It’s full of bouncy melodies, copious amounts of reverb, and doubled/tripled/quadrupled Beach-Boy-like harmonies. Engineered and mixed by Lennox’s second-grade classmate and Animal Collective bandmate Deakin (real name: Josh Dibb), you could easily mistake the album as being from the full Collective rather than just the two of them.

Numerous people helped with the album, including the other two members of Animal Collective, Geologist (real name: Brian Weltz) and Avey Tare (real name: David Portner), on a handful of songs. Cindy Lee, whose triple album Diamond Jubilee was on the Top 31 at #7 last year, performs on the wonderful song “Defense,” dropping in a masterful guitar solo in the middle of the song.

The video above, for the song “Ferry Lady,” is indicative of Panda Bear and Animal Collective’s trippy aesthetic. Just watch 30 seconds of the video above and you’ll swear someone has dropped something in your orange juice. The video for “Praise” is equally psychedelic.

Lennox put together an actual live band to tour the new album, a first for the Collective. You can watch them perform three songs on their “Tiny Desk Concert” for NPR earlier this year. I had the pleasure of seeing Panda Bear on the band’s tour back in May, and it was lovely if a little underwhelming. Through no fault of their own, I was seeing the band in the middle of my busiest show-going week of the year. Sandwiched between Sharon van Etten, Kendrick & SZA, and Jack White on one side, and Cheekface and Black Country, New Road on the other, my brain and body were experiencing live-show overload, and I was not prepared for the mellow chillwave ² attack that Panda Bear delivered.

I’ve been listening to Sinister Grift on repeat all day today, and I’m now beginning to wonder if I’ve underestimated the staying power of this album. Outside of Animal Collective’s Merriweather and their 2005 album Feels, I have a feeling this new album by Panda Bear is going to keep finding its way back into my rotation. Maybe you’ll feel the same way.

^{1. This album was actually first released as an album by Avey Tare and Panda Bear. It was reclassified as the debut album by Animal Collective sometime later.↩}
^{2. Panda Bear’s unbelievably good 2007 album Person Pitch is credited as the start of the electronic music microgenre “chillwave.” That album, and subsequent songs by Animal Collective and others, carved out a fairly substantial area of the music industry for themselves, resulting in the rise of bands like Neon Indian, Washed Out, and Toro y Moi.↩}

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#6 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Black Country, New Road

January 26, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Live at Bush Hall by Black Country, New Road

In last year’s review of Black Country, New Road’s amazing sophomore album, Ants From Up There (#11 in 2022), I shared that their deep-voiced lead singer, Isaac Wood, had left the band due to mental health reasons just four days before the release of the album. The band’s future was summarily thrown into the unknown. How does a band move on from something as impossibly disruptive as losing their lead voice?

Well, I couldn’t be happier to report that they’ve gone and done the impossible. BC,NR, from Cambridgeshire, England, went from a seven-piece ensemble with one lead singer to a six-piece group with four alternating leads, to magical effect. Shortly after Wood’s departure, the band had regrouped but knew their road to recovery wasn’t straightforward. Tyler Hyde, bassist for the band and de facto lead, shared that the band's next release might not take the form of a studio album, saying at the time, “I know it's not going to be an album in its normal form. It would be cool to work with an orchestra; it would be cool to do a film score. These are just some of the ideas we're bouncing around at the moment.” Just under a year later, the band took the natural next step: they put together three separate experience-driven performances at Bush Hall in West London, filmed them from multiple angles (including fans in the audience who had been tasked as part of the AV Club), edited those performances together into one cohesive whole, and then released the result as a film and subsequent album, the amazing Live at Bush Hall.

I don’t usually feature live albums in the Top 31, because live albums, no matter how nicely produced, tend to be mere “best of” collections of songs. The songs on Live at Bush Hall are all entirely new for BC,NR, written and performed live in the aftermath from Wood’s departure. In the span of 8 months in 2022, the band worked out the full set that would make up the three performances, with none of their earlier work with Wood being featured. In fact, the band has said they will never perform songs from their first two albums, out of respect for Wood, but should he feel strong enough to make a return to the stage, they would welcome the opportunity to do so.

The six piece are an eclectic mix, not unlike former indie darlings Arcade Fire. Tyler Hyde (bass), May Kershaw (keyboards), and Lewis Evans (horns and woodwinds) all take turns singing lead on two or more songs. And Charlie Wayne (drums), Georgia Ellery (violin), and Luke Mark (guitar) all lend their voice in harmony and background throughout the album.

When watching the film (linked above), you get a little insight into the three themes they chose for the performances. As reviewed in NME back in February, each performance “has its own unique theme, for which the band (under the collective pseudonym Hubert Dalcrosse) penned a brief synopsis for a different fictional theatrical performance. They are, respectively, “When The Whistle Thins,” about a council of Somerset farmers’ quarterly harvest summit, “I Ain’t Alfredo No Ghosts,” about a beloved pizza chef’s encounter with a poltergeist, and “The Taming Of The School,” a 1980s prom-themed caper. Each performance involved DIY art and stagecraft set, costumes and face paint, and, at least in the case of the pizza story, what appears to be a complete dining experience with actual pizza served. There is no attempt to make these three performances feel like one single performance in the film, by design. This is a collection of the best of the bunch from all three, and presented as such.

Having only heard Ants, but knowing Wood was no longer in the band, I had the immense pleasure of seeing BC,NR perform in the afternoon sun on the main stage at THING 2023. I didn’t know a single song (as I hadn’t known what had gone into Bush Hall and the stellar performance album that came from it), but I left feeling elated. Watch my personal recording of the band’s gobsmackingly lovely performance of “Turbines/Pigs,” led by pianist Kershaw. You can sense a real hush fall on the crowd – 95% not sure what we’re in for – as the song starts, and we all stand in rapt attention for 9 minutes of pure emotion. I saw more than one person crying at the end of it, no joke.

I cannot wait to see where BC,NR go next. Something tells me they won’t simply record these songs in a sterile studio environment. I expect the next record to be a full, studio-recorded album of new songs. Or maybe they’ve found their groove as a live-only band, and that’s what will form their next recorded work. One things for sure, they’re nowhere near “done.” They’ve faced a kind of adversity that bands never come back from, and they weathered the storm. I’ll be waiting here with bated breath for whatever comes next.

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#11 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — Black Country, New Road

January 21, 2023 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road

My guess is that this may be the last surprise of the 2022 Top 31. Sure, you might be surprised by the order in which I place my Top 10, or you might be surprised to find your particular favorite wasn’t one of mine. But I would be surprised if you don’t read the Top 10 as they’re revealed over the next ten days, nod your head at each one, and think “yep, ok, I can see that.”

Not so for Black Country, New Road, here at #11, which you’ve likely not ever heard of, despite some modest level of critical acclaim. And if you have heard of them, then you no doubt know why I’m placing them way up in my top albums of 2022. Known as BC,NR because, well, it’s a lot easier to write and it’s also awesome to have a comma in an abbreviation, the band met in Cambridgeshire, England, in 2018. They named themselves after the subject found at a click of the “random article” button in Wikipedia: Black Country New Road, a street in the West Midlands. Ants From Up There is their second album, recorded with seven members: Tyler Hyde (bass), Lewis Evans (flute, saxophone), May Kershaw (keyboards), Georgia Ellery (violin), Charlie Wayne (drums), Luke Mark (guitar), all of whom played their instruments deftly while singing backup to frontman, guitarist, and principal lyricist Isaac Wood.

Wood’s voice is low, with a vibrato that makes your subs shake — not quite as low as Ian Curtis, not quite as smooth as Justin Vernon, but every bit engaging. His lyrics have a literary lilt to them that don’t quite paint a story, but lead you to the next word, verse, and chorus as if compelled by tendrils of sound. And much to everyone detriment, there will be no more BC,NR albums with Wood at the helm. Four days before the release of Ants, Wood and the band announced on Instagram that he would be stepping away from the band, from the limelight, permanently. His mental health had been suffering greatly, and he needed to take care of himself.

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A post shared by Black Country, New Road (@blackcountrynewroad)

I first heard the album probably a week or so after it debuted on February 4, 2022. It filled me with such excitement, when I first started trying to learn more about the band I was devastated to find the post above and learn I’d never be able to experience the excitement Wood brings to the stage. I listened more and more to Ants over the coming months, and hit a point where I couldn’t put the album down. Pulling from the same influences as Beirut, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Decemberists, Slint, Noah and the Whale, BC,NR bring together heavy orchestration, ivy league intelligence, and prog-rock turns that leave you breathless. This is the album you need to fill the Arcade Fire-sized void left behind because of Win Butler’s sexual misconduct.

You’ll recognize violinist Georgia Ellery’s name, as she is one-half of Jockstrap, featured at #21 just 11 days ago. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time an artist has been an integral part of two separate bands featured on a single Top 31. When Wood announced his departure on January 31, the band had to cancel their upcoming tour and weren’t sure where this would lead them. A few months later, they had picked themselves back up and were touring again, now as a six-piece, with Hyde, Kershaw, Evans, and Wayne taking turns on lead vocals. I have not been able to see this incarnation of the band, but the strength of these songs and these musicians makes me believe it’s still every bit as strong.

Ants came out a year after those original seven band members released their debut, For The First Time, in February, 2021. I missed their debut, and based on how much I love Ants, a fairly sizable oversight on my part. I’m curious to see where the band will go next. I enjoy the Wood incarnation of the band, and am patiently waiting to see what the band will put together next. “Concord,” shown in the video above, is probably my favorite song on the album. But if you like it, I encourage you to explore the rest of the album.

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