I actually liked the Geordie Greep album better than all of Black MIDI’s records. I had no issues with “Holy holy” it’s got a sweet groove. I saw him live about a month ago and he absolutely blew me away. Would have loved to have seen BM live too but I think I’d have still preferred the Greep show since it was balls to the wall next level jazz fusion the entire time. The band he’s put together is insanely tight and Greep has so much charisma as a bandleader. I felt like I was witnessing the second coming of Mahavishnu Orchestra. They soloed like crazy, they stopped on a dime, they morphed genres a bunch of times, they had incredible dynamic control and they extended a song that was 2 and a half minutes on the album to over 20! Greep’s also getting real thin up top, that guy’s going to be bald by the time he’s 30 lol.

BCNR are probably my favourite band to debut in the 2020s. The first two records are terrific (is it fair to say that Ants From Up There is kind of like this decade’s In The Areoplane Over The Sea? does that comparison work for you?), but I’ve still been really into the more lush pastoral direction Black Country New Road are going in now. Forever Howlong is my top album the year so far. Tyler, Georgia, and May each have distinct voices as singers and songwriters and it’s kind of crazy that they were hiding behind Issac the entire time. I especially like Tyler’s voice. Each album they’ve made so far has been completely different from all the others (even the two with Issac are very different from one another), and I think that’s pretty cool. Some of the tracks like “Nancy Tries To Take The Night” remind me of early Genesis with all the intricate acoustic guitar picking, the climax of “Two Horses” sounds like it could be off XTC’s “English Settlement”, the title track being a 5-recorder composition is some gentle giant meets joanna newsom kind of thing. It’s pretty clear that even though Issac’s persona was so striking (and that’s an element they’re never going to recapture) it wasn’t like he was the only member bringing ideas to the band, they were always very collaborative. Maybe they wont ever top the first two albums, but if the rest of their output is on the level of Forever Howlong I for one won’t be upset.