2022 - UK
Art Rock, Post-Rock, Chamber Pop, Indie Rock
Something was about to happen, we all knew it. October 2021, Chaos Space Marine was released, unsettling but promising. In November, Bread Song. And all of a sudden, there it was. The myth was taking place. We didn’t know Black Country, New Road were able of such tenderness and subtlety, but here they are with a magnificent song. A simple single, a magnificent one. And in the end of November, while the nights start to get colder and the sun disappears early in the day, Concorde. How can a band outdo themselves only by releasing singles ? And that’s vey little to say because the greatest one of them was released in January, Snow Globes. With a quality this high, we knew something was about to happen… in February. And still, those singles were just the very beginning. Ants From Up There… Let’s enter the beast’s womb.
“I was meant to love you. Can’t you tell ?”
The image of Concorde flies all over the album, a modern kind of Titanic that was supposed to take humanity forward and ended up crashing in a hotel, killing its passengers and some civilians. In Ants From Up There, the singer and guitarist Isaac Wood acts like one of those scientists who believed this invention would be revolutionary. It’s an obsession, an “idée fixe”. With that in mind, we could have expected an album in the same shape as For the First Time, an album that never clicked with me because of the strange alloy between post-punk and Klezmer jazz. But all my expectations have been surpassed. The band forgot their feverish tribulations, to explore what was hiding behind.
Although being tremendously sad, the band’s alchemy and the fragility of Isaac Wood’s voice, altered by every emotions running through his mind, achieve to built something bittersweet and transcendent that reminds me of Arcade Fire’s Funeral, replacing indie rock influences by post-rock ones. The longing for escape, the games between voices and instruments, the storytelling, the repeated climaxes. If Chaos Space Marine is the most joyful song of all, a patchwork of ideas wonderfully meshing together, it’s not the most uplifting one. With Ants From Up There, the band uses music to exorcise their fears. That’s why the most powerful songs are the ones filled with anxiousness and lyricism, Concorde, Bread Song, Snow Globes , The Place Where He Inserted the Blade, Basketball Shoes. And another word that goes really well with “exorcise” is “catharsis”. If the replay ability of an album like this one is this important, it’s because of how rare some moments are. They manage to create a sonic environment the listener is an entire part of. “And Concorde and I die free this time !”, “Every time I try to make lunch for anyone else, in my head, I end up dreaming of you !” Each time those lyrics are sung, you cannot escape the drive to scream them too. Here lies the immense power of Ants From Up There, it’s a cathartic magical spell with ravishing momentum, rapturous rhythms and lyrics drenched in arsenic. A plane going flying through a cyclone and it’s eye.
And their music feels so close to us. Anchored in pop culture, with references to Billie Eilish, Kanye West, Robin Williams, Warhammer and Haldern Pop Festival, the young members of Black Country, New Road are from our world, they share our culture, our references. In interviews, they talk about Kurt Vile, Frank Ocean, late Bob Dylan, Steve Reich, Caroline Polachek. These are artists we know, artists we sometimes grew up with. Ants From Up There is, in that case, one of the first and most accomplished update of modern music thanks to its use and acknowledgment of contemporary influences. But again, they’re not doing pop, or post-minimalism. But yet you got the catchy melodies, the repetitive motives. Because they perfectly understood what make the music they love so good, and infuse their own post-rock music with these ingredients. So when Isaac Wood talks about his obsession with Concorde, a metaphor for someone he loves as if it was his fate, we are with him, the distance between the artist and the listener is profoundly reduced to a few centimetres. His voice is organic as hell, and the band plays with such freedom that it feels like Wood’s mind took possession of the production, everybody sailing towards the same direction, like on Snow Globes where the duet between Wood and drummer Charlie Wayne feels like an implicit reunion of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant on Dazed and Confused. Wood’s anxieties, with his bandmates as guides and a supporting force : Charlie, Georgia, Lewis, Tyler, May, and Luke.
With Haldern , the first troubled part of the album ends. Isaac Wood goes for a walk while saxophonist Lewis Evans writes a song about the passing of his uncle, due to Covid-19. A lovely, melodic interlude that takes us in a small and gentle world. On the next song, The Place Where He Inserted the Blade, Isaac Wood is back. And it seems like his walk drowned him in his mind even more. Music left him for a moment, and he’s back with the harshest musical experience of the year. The three songs ending the album crafts this moment where a beautifully good album becomes a masterpiece. “Good morning.” Again and again, day after day, everything feels the same, everything feels lonely, cold. The repetitive lyrics prepare his doom, and the solution to his troubles feels more and more unattainable. “I am the convo, you are the weather” shows how much Wood’s passive behaviour prevents him from affirming his personality… except with his music. But music cannot save everyone, and that’s why Isaac Wood left the band four days before the release of this album, another spontaneous gesture now part of the myth. To find stability, health, to escape the Concorde’s memory. But Isaac’s departure is not vain, because what he’s leaving behind him is an album that has the ability to help others. Us, the listeners, so we can let go of our own Concordes.
On The Place Where He Inserted the Blade, Isaac Wood sings about dependence, how you enter a relationship and lose yourself in it, starving while the other eats in your bed, starving because you’re not eating yourself and gave everything you had to your lover. All this through the metaphor of watching a cooking tutorial. And if the other wants to leave and you forgot yourself with her, what’s left of you ? This is when the Concorde crashes. But you don’t want to see it. You can’t. Because it feels like dying. Snow Globes. “That’s a funny looking shrine on your bedroom wall” sounds like the last attempt at smiling at something bringing you joy, but you know it’s already over and you can’t do anything about it. The relentless drums are absolutely mesmerizing, making this song feel like a state of mind impossible to escape. Isaac Wood can smile as much as he wants to, looking at the shrine, but this smile will crackle ultimately. That’s when it ends. Crack. Ashes in the air, furious cyclone, When the album ends with the epic Basketball Shoes, it feels like the band is trying to save Isaac Wood’s mind with all their musical strength, filling his head with brutal walls of sounds, thrilling violin play and an assembly of voices. “All I’ve been forms the drone, we sing the rest / Oh, your generous loan to me, your crippling interest”.
Little Simz, Kendrick Lamar, FKA Twigs, many artists have been talking this year about the toxic relationships fans perpetuate with them. Pressure, savior complex, icon status, all of these deadly factors are not going to stand in Isaac Wood’s way. This final line is his goodbye. He doesn’t want us to invade his private life in order to understand the album’s complexity and very personal lyrics. We are alone now, it’s our own job if we want to do so, and it can’t be at the cost of Wood’s mental health. It has been a while since an album hasn’t met such an overwhelming reception. If so many of us are talking of this album, while never being consensual (and that’s for the better), it’s because yes, something happened in February 2022. The day all of our expectations were blown away. February 4th. And this is a time to rejoice, seeing an album this complex, generous and mind blowing conquer the ears of an entire community. And I truly hope it will continue to reach more and more people with time. I can only end this review with a celebration. A celebration of music, of artistry, of emotions. This is the album 2022 gave us, so watch history in the making ! Ants From Up There is filled with secrets, it’s enigmatic and requires interpretations, a bottomless pit for reviewers and listeners so, in the end, you can find exactly what you want inside these lyrics. This is the place where he inserted the blade. The place’s name is Ants From Up There, and it left a huge crevice for you to dive in and cherish its treasures.
“I was meant to love you. Can’t you tell ?”
The image of Concorde flies all over the album, a modern kind of Titanic that was supposed to take humanity forward and ended up crashing in a hotel, killing its passengers and some civilians. In Ants From Up There, the singer and guitarist Isaac Wood acts like one of those scientists who believed this invention would be revolutionary. It’s an obsession, an “idée fixe”. With that in mind, we could have expected an album in the same shape as For the First Time, an album that never clicked with me because of the strange alloy between post-punk and Klezmer jazz. But all my expectations have been surpassed. The band forgot their feverish tribulations, to explore what was hiding behind.
Although being tremendously sad, the band’s alchemy and the fragility of Isaac Wood’s voice, altered by every emotions running through his mind, achieve to built something bittersweet and transcendent that reminds me of Arcade Fire’s Funeral, replacing indie rock influences by post-rock ones. The longing for escape, the games between voices and instruments, the storytelling, the repeated climaxes. If Chaos Space Marine is the most joyful song of all, a patchwork of ideas wonderfully meshing together, it’s not the most uplifting one. With Ants From Up There, the band uses music to exorcise their fears. That’s why the most powerful songs are the ones filled with anxiousness and lyricism, Concorde, Bread Song, Snow Globes , The Place Where He Inserted the Blade, Basketball Shoes. And another word that goes really well with “exorcise” is “catharsis”. If the replay ability of an album like this one is this important, it’s because of how rare some moments are. They manage to create a sonic environment the listener is an entire part of. “And Concorde and I die free this time !”, “Every time I try to make lunch for anyone else, in my head, I end up dreaming of you !” Each time those lyrics are sung, you cannot escape the drive to scream them too. Here lies the immense power of Ants From Up There, it’s a cathartic magical spell with ravishing momentum, rapturous rhythms and lyrics drenched in arsenic. A plane going flying through a cyclone and it’s eye.
And their music feels so close to us. Anchored in pop culture, with references to Billie Eilish, Kanye West, Robin Williams, Warhammer and Haldern Pop Festival, the young members of Black Country, New Road are from our world, they share our culture, our references. In interviews, they talk about Kurt Vile, Frank Ocean, late Bob Dylan, Steve Reich, Caroline Polachek. These are artists we know, artists we sometimes grew up with. Ants From Up There is, in that case, one of the first and most accomplished update of modern music thanks to its use and acknowledgment of contemporary influences. But again, they’re not doing pop, or post-minimalism. But yet you got the catchy melodies, the repetitive motives. Because they perfectly understood what make the music they love so good, and infuse their own post-rock music with these ingredients. So when Isaac Wood talks about his obsession with Concorde, a metaphor for someone he loves as if it was his fate, we are with him, the distance between the artist and the listener is profoundly reduced to a few centimetres. His voice is organic as hell, and the band plays with such freedom that it feels like Wood’s mind took possession of the production, everybody sailing towards the same direction, like on Snow Globes where the duet between Wood and drummer Charlie Wayne feels like an implicit reunion of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant on Dazed and Confused. Wood’s anxieties, with his bandmates as guides and a supporting force : Charlie, Georgia, Lewis, Tyler, May, and Luke.
With Haldern , the first troubled part of the album ends. Isaac Wood goes for a walk while saxophonist Lewis Evans writes a song about the passing of his uncle, due to Covid-19. A lovely, melodic interlude that takes us in a small and gentle world. On the next song, The Place Where He Inserted the Blade, Isaac Wood is back. And it seems like his walk drowned him in his mind even more. Music left him for a moment, and he’s back with the harshest musical experience of the year. The three songs ending the album crafts this moment where a beautifully good album becomes a masterpiece. “Good morning.” Again and again, day after day, everything feels the same, everything feels lonely, cold. The repetitive lyrics prepare his doom, and the solution to his troubles feels more and more unattainable. “I am the convo, you are the weather” shows how much Wood’s passive behaviour prevents him from affirming his personality… except with his music. But music cannot save everyone, and that’s why Isaac Wood left the band four days before the release of this album, another spontaneous gesture now part of the myth. To find stability, health, to escape the Concorde’s memory. But Isaac’s departure is not vain, because what he’s leaving behind him is an album that has the ability to help others. Us, the listeners, so we can let go of our own Concordes.
On The Place Where He Inserted the Blade, Isaac Wood sings about dependence, how you enter a relationship and lose yourself in it, starving while the other eats in your bed, starving because you’re not eating yourself and gave everything you had to your lover. All this through the metaphor of watching a cooking tutorial. And if the other wants to leave and you forgot yourself with her, what’s left of you ? This is when the Concorde crashes. But you don’t want to see it. You can’t. Because it feels like dying. Snow Globes. “That’s a funny looking shrine on your bedroom wall” sounds like the last attempt at smiling at something bringing you joy, but you know it’s already over and you can’t do anything about it. The relentless drums are absolutely mesmerizing, making this song feel like a state of mind impossible to escape. Isaac Wood can smile as much as he wants to, looking at the shrine, but this smile will crackle ultimately. That’s when it ends. Crack. Ashes in the air, furious cyclone, When the album ends with the epic Basketball Shoes, it feels like the band is trying to save Isaac Wood’s mind with all their musical strength, filling his head with brutal walls of sounds, thrilling violin play and an assembly of voices. “All I’ve been forms the drone, we sing the rest / Oh, your generous loan to me, your crippling interest”.
Little Simz, Kendrick Lamar, FKA Twigs, many artists have been talking this year about the toxic relationships fans perpetuate with them. Pressure, savior complex, icon status, all of these deadly factors are not going to stand in Isaac Wood’s way. This final line is his goodbye. He doesn’t want us to invade his private life in order to understand the album’s complexity and very personal lyrics. We are alone now, it’s our own job if we want to do so, and it can’t be at the cost of Wood’s mental health. It has been a while since an album hasn’t met such an overwhelming reception. If so many of us are talking of this album, while never being consensual (and that’s for the better), it’s because yes, something happened in February 2022. The day all of our expectations were blown away. February 4th. And this is a time to rejoice, seeing an album this complex, generous and mind blowing conquer the ears of an entire community. And I truly hope it will continue to reach more and more people with time. I can only end this review with a celebration. A celebration of music, of artistry, of emotions. This is the album 2022 gave us, so watch history in the making ! Ants From Up There is filled with secrets, it’s enigmatic and requires interpretations, a bottomless pit for reviewers and listeners so, in the end, you can find exactly what you want inside these lyrics. This is the place where he inserted the blade. The place’s name is Ants From Up There, and it left a huge crevice for you to dive in and cherish its treasures.