Trust in the Windmill Scene bands to deliver an honest replacement to birthday greetings. Of course, Happy Birthday will not replace the standard sang in restaurants up and down the country. But we can live in hope. Black Country, New Road has offered us an olive branch, an alternate to Happy Birthday to You. Their second single ahead of Forever Howlong is another quality example of how the band are adapting to in-house changes. Every member has a vocal duty, every musician has a place. Happy Birthday, like preceding song Besties, shines a light on this and the close relationships that let it work. Crucially, though, is experimentation within the broad confines of the art rock Black Country, New Road listeners are familiar with. A lighter instrumental mixture, a darker, honest lyrical purpose. It is the inevitable balance which has heard great work appear time and again.
A sister song to Besties, not because they have released one after the other, but because of a similar chord progression. Despite this, Happy Birthday features a cutting, creative slice of life which adds a hard rock edge to those usual, baroque charms. A chance for the band to add as close to a straight rock song as can be to their discography. Happy Birthday is a reminder not just that you need to make your own luck, but that even when you do, things can still fall apart. Where Besties is a song of unity, Happy Birthday is a track which hopes to make good on those strong connection between best friends. What life throws at the protagonist heard in Happy Birthday is not the literal or the experienced, but the fear, the what ifs of life. As much a song of defiance as it is of hope, and that blur relies on a tremendous instrumental effort.
That first refrain is preceded by some of the heaviest instrumental material this new iteration of Black Country, New Road has offered. It appears once more, once the condescending, critical notes are hit. Where the protagonist is spoken to, rather than speaking for themselves. Property, expectations, travel, it all blurs into this bold occasion where Black Country, New Road find themselves tearing at the path so-often walked through life. Happy Birthday is a reminder to make that titular anniversary unique. To carve your own way through, otherwise you’re fodder to the sea of people who did nothing. Black Country, New Road has made their relationship with the world around them the focus of these singles. How do we connect with one another in a time of parasocial and faux relationships?
Happy Birthday does not reveal the how or what, but it does fly the red flag of social etiquette. Is it a matter of time before our youth escapes us, before we feel like hollow shells, dropping the pride we once had for ourselves? It is hard to tell when it happens, but Happy Birthday suggests it will occur if we are not careful. Intense electric guitar work that drives a clearer rock core through Happy Birthday is crucial in building that anxiety. But Happy Birthday makes it clear we should not shy away from the crumbling world, the city on fire. Embrace it. If Besties is a commentary on the ruinous nature of always-online curiosities and the impact it has on our self-worth, Happy Birthday is at the other end of the spectrum but dealing with the same horrors. Our perception of ourselves not through the lens of social media, but through those who feel free to comment on our lives. Happy Birthday, to those who need to hear it, is a defiant reminder of making your own route off the beaten path and through life. If not for yourself, then for the defiance which comes in the soft underbelly of spite.
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