“It sounded like a really exciting opportunity, and then as soon as I got into it I kind of resented the process, because it’s so difficult,” says Tyler Hyde of Black Country, New Road, of narrowing down her favourite records to just 13 choices. She may be only 26, but she has already amalgamated several lifetimes’ worth of influences and taste diversions – from off-kilter 1970s singer-songwriters to millennial R&B. “There’s some people that aren’t on this list because I just couldn’t pick an album,” she caveats. “Obviously Bob Dylan would be there, Kendrick Lamar would have been on there. The Beach Boys… I just couldn’t pick.”
This diversity of taste reflects in the output to date of Black Country, New Road, who formed in Cambridge in 2018, and have since experimented with constantly shifting styles including post rock, jazz, sprechgesang and chamber pop. Now a six-piece after the 2022 departure of former vocalist Isaac Wood, the group are preparing to release their third album Forever Howlong, the first to feature Hyde on co-lead vocal and songwriting duties, alongside Georgia Ellery and May Kershaw. The new songs lean towards humour and explorations of female friendship, and offer three separate but connected perspectives on contemporary womanhood.
Hyde’s newfound spot at the group’s shared frontline has informed her Baker’s Dozen. “I ended up going down the avenue of ‘most influential towards the music that I make’, asking why I make certain sounds, or what led me to where I am now,” she says of her choices, which include all-female vocal trio The Roches, and legendary songwriter Randy Newman, whose tongue-in-cheek spirit is all over her songs on Forever Howlong. “I find I’ve started making music that’s a bit like what John Lennon called Paul McCartney’s era of ‘grandma music’,” she laughs. “Cheeky show tunes, tongue-in-cheek piano music… I don’t know whether I’ve gone too far. But Randy is the guy that started all that for me.”
Amongst the current inspirations, there’s also a lot of tracks that date back to a certain time in her life, when she was forming the person and musician she is now. “A big bracket of them come from around 18, when I’d left home and I had more space to kind of figure out what I liked without the influence of friends,” she explains. “Most of the music on this list is transportative music. It’s like I’m going into some kind of time traveling machine. It’s kind of magic when you put a record on and suddenly you’re connecting with someone that you forgot about, which is just an old version of yourself.”
Black Country, New Road’s new album Forever Howlong is released on 4 April via Ninja Tune. To begin reading Tyler Hyde’s Baker’s Dozen, click ‘First Selection’ below
