My New Band Believe – My New Band Believe
It’s quaint to think that black midi were once considered just a noisy math rock band. That’s a reductive take on the early days of the rapidly evolving, increasingly more progressive London band, but not altogether inaccurate; given their arc toward more complex arrangements and conceptual songwriting on albums such as 2021’s Cavalcade and 2022’s Hellfire, as well as the grandeur of Geordie Greep’s solo debut The New Sound, by comparison their 2019 debut Schlagenheim is a much rowdier—if still intricate—blast of punk energy. Yet seemingly as quickly as they took that remarkably fast upward swing toward more elaborate songwriting and progressive rock’s sense of theatricality, black midi came to an abrupt end, splintering just six years after they formed.
Chalk it up to differing ambitions rather than an empty tank. As frontman Greep delivered a sprawling reintroduction in the form of The New Sound‘s Zappa-esque fusion style and entertainingly sleazy narratives, his former bandmate Cameron Picton offers a similarly technically proficient but wildly variant stylistic approach. The name of the project is something of a misdirection, not so much a band but a rotating cast of players—including members of caroline and Black Country, New Road—contributing to Picton’s central vision of a radical take on a primarily acoustic singer/songwriter record on its self-titled debut. Subdued strums and plaintive piano chords can certainly be found here, but they’re second billing to its joyful eruptions of atypical rhythmic figures, maximalist arrangements and sprawling sonic explorations.
The absence of electrified sounds like those heard on black midi’s most incendiary performances doesn’t prevent My New Band Believe from delivering some staggering musical eruptions of its own. More than a few of them punctuate the relatively subdued landscape of opening ballad “Target Practice,” wherein the climactic emergence of strings underscores Picton’s whiplash imagery, paralleling the grisly “if we see you on a spike with holes for your eyes, we’ll just keep practicing our aim” with a softer-hearted reassurance, “if you see me in the sky, and you break into a smile/Don’t cry, you deserve this.” And as that all-too-brief yet dramatic opener comes to a sudden halt, in comes the rush of shuffling drums and the tumbling acoustic arpeggios of “In the Blink of An Eye,” an immediately thrilling riposte to the idea that folk music can’t absolutely rip.
As is to be expected from an artist and a cast of musicians descended from the tradition of progressive rock and folk, My New Band Believe’s debut is at its most dazzling when Picton and company are given the space to explore an idea as far as it can potentially go. “Heart of Darkness” is one such moment, pairing King-Crimsonian turbulence and torment with the elegant guitar proficiency of Bert Jansch, its epic sprawl showcasing both Picton and his collaborators’ breathtaking instrumental abilities as well as his mastery at building a self-contained epic. It’s the album’s best song, though it’s in good company with “Actress,” another eight-minute stretch of sturm und drang, awe-inspiring climaxes and more patient, slow-burning builds. Yet even when pared back to something more digestible, songs like the sinister lurch of “Pearls” and the gorgeous balladry of “Love Story,” made even more moving with its juxtaposition of imagery of domestic bliss with that of debilitating grief (“I pull you close in the night/But you’re not there…“), Picton offers no shortage of breathtaking detours and deeply affecting plot twists alike.
Where once Picton screamed his way through the furious climax of “Near DT, MI,” here he maintains a restraint that grounds the album’s wilder swings in a human vulnerability. Amid the brief spikes of blaring noise in the short closer “One Night” and violent imagery such as “Banging on my eardrums/Chewing off my jaw/You are not the man I took you for,” Picton hardly ever rises above a whisper. The space between the highs and lows is a microcosm of the dynamism at play throughout the album, exploring an even greater expanse of space by allowing for more room to breathe. Where Picton might have set certain limitations in volume, tonal palette and instrumentation, what he and his deep well of collaborators has crafted feels, in fact, limitless.
Label: Rough Trade
Year: 2026
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My New Band Believe : My New Band Believe
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