BARCELONA - Making art is a process that, when done right, comes from a place of emotional vulnerability and a desire to explore new territory. Artists like singer/bassist/guitarist Tyler Hyde of Black Country, New Road are always looking to move forward and do it more than right.
"I really value the body of work that we made. They got us here... we try to play those songs every now and then to kind of make the set more exciting to feel some sense of musical vulnerability. But forwards is the way that we always look to making music," Hyde said in an interview with Music Times.
The band was in Barcelona, fresh off a sound check at the Sala Paral·lel 62 concert hall in preparation for their performance that night for Primavera a la Ciutat, a program adjacent to the Primavera Sound festival where artists can play at local venues off the festival grounds. They almost exclusively played songs from their newest album, "Forever Howlong," which was released in April of last year.
However, they opened their set with "Strangers," a song they recorded in collaboration with War Child, a charity organization that seeks to help children affected by war, for the album, "HELP(2)," which featured artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Arctic Monkeys. And like all of their concerts in recent years, they prominently draped a large Palestinian flag in front of the keyboard. Primavera is known for their performing artists' advocacy for Palestine, with fellow acts KNEECAP and Gorillaz making it a major part of their show at the festival this year.
Hyde says that she grew up aware of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as her mother would talk about it in the household. "It was such a normalized situation, for lack of a better word, that you don't become an activist until much later in life. And I can't remember when the penny dropped, but I felt like I had to do something about it. It's hard to say. I mean, from birth, conflict is just so normalized in life."
Despite dividing the role of lead singer among the six members of the band (Hyde, keyboardist May Kershaw, saxophonist Lewis Evans, violinist Georgia Ellery, drummer Charlie Wayne, and guitarist Luke Mark), "Forever Howlong" is exclusively sung by Hyde, Kershaw, and Ellery, the female members of the band.
However, Hyde insists that it was "utterly circumstantial." However, she elaborated that it was a refreshing change of pace after the departure of former lead vocalist/lyricist Isaac Wood.
She added, "We are not taking a stand with that. I mean, it was definitely a refreshing thing coming from a very male-fronted band. And, you can't help but feel an energy shift when three women start fronting something. But equally, when the three women fronted the band, it actually made the whole project look way more democratic than it had done before. And it was always democratic, but it wasn't represented in that way. So I see it more as a democracy now, if that makes sense."
