Review Summary: all I've been forms the drone; we sing the rest
The name Black Country, New Road rings out in all the right circles for an indie band trying to make their bones, though there's a slightly hollow after-echo tinged with the questions of 'was their debut really good enough?', 'why re-record the first single?' and a personal favourite 'post-punk should adhere strictly to my understanding of it at all times'.
Ants From Up There is an ambitious, heartfelt move to correct this and cement the band's name in the permanent record. With the thematic coherence of a semi-conceptual art piece and the comfortable chemistry of a band finally growing into their sound, it's certainly the best album to come from this post-Brexit windmill-wave klezmer-core-whatever scene. It may actually be good enough that we can just acknowledge Black Country, New Road as a fantastic band in their own right, without defaulting to references to their scene or peers in every breath.
So yes, your former favourite sardonic "Sunglasses" writers have gotten a bigger budget and a softer style – or matured into a more thoughtful, dynamic sound, depending on how much patience you have to actually listen to things.
Ants From Up There may return again and again to the haunting image of the Concorde (the album title, presumably, describing us humans as seen from the window of the plane) but its sound is pleasantly grounded, drilling down on an earthier feel like R.E.M.-circa-
Fables of the Reconstruction. One can almost hear the band gleefully puncturing their built-up mythos, resolutely insisting on being, in the words of saxophonist Lewis Evans "the least mysterious people ever I think, potentially of all time" by choosing to record the most fitting choice for each song instead of the loudest or most chaotic.
The only misstep Black Country, New Road made in promotion was failing to make "Good Will Hunting" their first single. It's the purest pop song in their discography, and a perfect bridge between
Ants From Up There's more world-weary concerns and the familiar tics of
For the First Time, namely a sardonic portrait of a crumbling relationship with an obligatory reference to a female pop star. Actual first single "Chaos Space Marine", with its vaudevillian shuffle and campy energy, is a winkingly tough sell beautifully elevated by context. Working as a kind of overture to the album to come, with its coda quoting tentpole lyrics from all the major songs, the opener is a pure piece of sleight of hand setting up an album it is completely unlike. On the other hand, the lovely "Bread Song" effortlessly sums up the baffling dichotomy that makes this band so fascinating. A freeform first half which plays fast and loose with the idea of time signature establishes the stakes of the song, a mix of black comedy and intimate pathos which manages to make the phrase "particles of bread" absurdly affecting, before the second half is transformed by a propulsive drumbeat that hits like a haymaker. It makes for a strong duo with "Haldern", which perfects the gently escalating sound of "Track X", though the album's most emotional surprise comes immediately after with "Mark's Theme", a wordless yet deeply felt eulogy to Evans' late uncle.
This newfound willingness, even ability, to just be nakedly emotional and let the melodies lead is the best weapon this new Black Country, New Road have at their disposal. Isaac Wood, who once seemed right on the edge of slipping into complete post-ironic-irony with his spoken word drawl, sings the entire album in a delicate quaver which is a perfect fit for this new vulnerability. "Concorde", the band's best song, utilises the infamous plane – a symbol for reckless spending under capitalism and the caviar-serving, supersonic excesses of too much money - as a metaphor for the corrupting influence success would have on his relationships back home. It's a gorgeously written meditation on the price of fame and money that gels well with the band's devastating interpretation of MGMT's "Time to Pretend", with a climax that ranks among the best in recent memory: "and for less than a moment / we'd share the same sky / and then Isaac will suffer / and Concorde will fly." In the same vein of delicacy, "Snow Globes" is more or less a starring vehicle for drummer Charlie Wayne, who lets loose halfway through with a free jazz-inspired solo like Talk Talk's "Ascension Day" filtered through a punk battle of the bands. You could call this the rising tension that sets the stage for "Basketball Shoes", an already infamous-among-fans epic which is "the whole basis and blueprint for the album" according to Wood, a twelve-minute opus which flits through post-rock ballad, pop-punk banger and a choir-laden dramatic finish that would make Roger Waters blush. It's the kind of tune that can make you weep and laugh at yourself for doing so, as I may or may not have done just now, a little bit tipsy off Great Northern and oddly affected by the wounded heart beating underneath the skin of this bizarre band.
That's the kind of album we're dealing with, sax and violins blaring and drums clattering like flailing limbs keeping us from getting too close from the truth at the centre: that this an album about losing sight of the things you love, about the little buildups of slights and injustices that can make a relationship break down. The band refer to
Ants From Up There as a "lovers' record" in their recent Quietus interview, specifically describing Wood's new style ("it's strong because it's got fragility"). Maybe it could be more accurately described as a post-lovers' record, looking back on what was with the bittersweetness of nostalgia and the desperate hope that we all get a second chance. Wood sums it up in the first few minutes of "Basketball Shoes" with a heartrending flourish that brings the concept of the entire album in for a landing: "Concorde flies in my room / tears the house to shreds / defines the night as such / a home for us stick insects / and leaves no trace of love."
