Black Country, New Road’s general rock vibe is high school band class discovers David Byrne. All seven of them play a different instrument, but they all come to wreck the stage with Big “Smoke On The Water”-Riff Energy. Last night at a live show in the UK, they injected some of that post-punkitude into ABBA’s “Mamma Mia.”
On keys, May Kershaw played the song’s teetering intro, as Georgia Ellery (violin) and Lewis Evans (sax) answered it with a roiling strings-and-brass combo. Ellery held her own as the violin strings stood in for ABBA’s high synths, while singer Isaac Wood led the crowd in a shambolic shout-a-long. Check out the full performance above, as well as the band’s other recent cover, of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So,” below.
Last week, Black Country, New Road announced their first-ever North American tour in support of their debut album For The First Time. The stretch begins on the east coast in February 2022, and winds up on the west coast, ending in mid-March. See the full list of tour dates below.
02/18 — Washington, D.C. @ DC9
02/19 — Boston, MA @ The Sinclair
02/22 — Brooklyn, NY @ The Sultan Room
02/23 — Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere
02/25 — Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
02/26 — Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB
02/28 — Detroit, MI @ Third Man Records
03/01 — Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
03/03 — Seattle, WA @ Barboza
03/04 — Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
03/05 — Arcata, CA @ The Miniplex
03/06 — San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
03/08 — Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
03/09 — Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater
Black Country, New Road’s album For The First Time is out now via Ninja Tune.