Song Recommendation: “Besties” by Black Country, New Road (2025)

It sounds a little mean to write it out in black and white like this, but, apparently, it’s the truth: this band needed a different singer. At least, for me. Their breakthrough from 2022, Ants From Up There, earned a lot of critical and fan chatter but I mostly bounced off of it. With their new record, they coalesce around a sound that I can’t help but describe as “jaunty”--and while that’s a touch reductive, I will say that I wouldn’t have even taken a listen to this album if not for an intrepid Reddit user who slammed into the r/joannanewsom forum, Kool-Aid Man style, and simply dropped a link to this new BCNR album and one sentence saying something like: “you people are gonna love this.” And, yeah, if you–like me–are in love with Newsom’s particular brand of semi-timeless but still old-time-coded folk chamber-pop (especially as demonstrated Have One on Me and Divers) then this one does hit particularly hard.