Masterpiece Theater: Ants From Up There - Black Country, New Road: Review

Black Country, New Road

is a British post-punk band who have been one of the most surefire critical darlings in all of music since debuting with their single Sunglasses in 2019. They released their first album For The First Time early last year to massive critical acclaim and didn't wait long before starting their new era and announcing this sophomore project. A major surprise was thrown in less than a week before the album was released when the band announced on their social media that lead singer and primary lyricist Isaac Wood was departing from the band to focus on his own health and well being.

Review By Lav:

I knew Ants From Up There was going to be special. I've been talking about it online for months, each of the four singles released in the lead-up to the record have been impressive in brand new ways. I was sure that the band was giving themselves the opportunity to build on their debut album and create something even more timeless and brilliant, but I had no idea. Like many people I was surprised by Isaac's departure at first but the more I thought about it the more his neurotic and earnestly vulnerable lyrical style made me realize just how difficult being in his position could be to somebody's mental health. After hearing this record, all I want is for Isaac to be okay.

I feel genuine trepidation trying to review this album. It's a remarkably conceptual product that uses recurring lyrical themes throughout to tell the story of a strained relationship. I will talk a lot in this review about co-dependency which feels like the theme of the record, a cautionary tale of how painful the experience of needing someone who is no longer there can be. These themes are explored through vivid and impassioned lyrical metaphors which I've spent days trying to break down and I still feel like I don't have a solid grip on everything. This is once in a generation writing and I really did my best to capture what makes it so brilliant in this review, but this is no substitute for engaging with the album yourself and letting its compositions and mysteries reveal themselves to you. For now there's no more suspense. Everything about this record is absolutely brilliant and at the end of the review I will even make a comparison to one of my favorite albums of all time. But I can't take an express train there without explaining all the little things that make it so spectacular.

As a lead single Chaos Space Marine impressed me a lot as one of the most singularly upbeat sonic statements of the band's entire career. Isaac's lyrics backed only by bouncy piano keys on the verses gives everything a show tune sensation that is only built upon when the track erupts into a life affirming chorus. It's even better within the context of the record because it serves as a brilliant juxtaposition. The vivid spacey imagery and surrealism is pure escapism from the dreary emotional reality and pain of the rest of the album. Concorde comes immediately after this and serves as the thematic centerpiece of the entire album, setting up lyrical themes that will return throughout the rest of its runtime. 

The Concorde Fallacy of sunk cost is used here as a metaphor for holding onto a relationship with someone who is no longer reciprocating the love. This entire record sees Isaac dealing with the dependency he has on someone who is no longer providing and how broken that makes him feel. The chorus of Concorde seems so genuinely lovely as Isaac sings about everything he would do just to "see your light" but it all turns to outright pain when you dive into the song's themes of emotional dependence. On the instrumental side of things the track is quieter by comparison favoring a gentle but still heavily orchestrated sway. It does let loose on the final minute of the track which feels like an eruption of all the sadness that's built up across its runtime. 

Bread Song continues down the rabbit hole of instrumental sparsity while the lyrical theme shifts to focus on a failing long distance relationship. As silly as it can sound at first there is actually an extremely purposeful meaning behind the metaphor of someone leaving behind bread crumbs in your bed. That reveal also leads into the clattering drum sticks which serve as the send off to a more instrumentally busy finale of the song. While the finale can sound somewhat like a catharsis I don't really see it that way and I'd describe it as more of a confession or acknowledgement that feels more fitting to the sound of the instrumentation. 

Good Will Hunting feels almost like a recap of everything on the record so far as it drags us back into the specifics of the relationship Isaac spends most of the album addressing with a bridge that hits like a lyrical train. The second half of the song returns to the larger than life imagery of Chaos Space Marine once again being deployed as a splash of surreal escapism. When it returns back to the bridge and chorus with a much grander take on the events Isaac is imagining it's like taking a birds eye view of the whole relationship. I can't say for sure that this is where the title Ants From Up There comes from but it surely has something to do with it because it all fits together too well. 

The second half of the record starts off with Haldern and then Mark's Theme, a long saxophone solo dedicated to a loved one lost to COVID. Haldern begins as a true piano ballad and perhaps one of the most depressive sounding moments on the record. Even once the instrumentation kicks in the somber brass and gentle violin paint a tragic picture. The song was originally performed as an improvisation which adds credence to the way the whole thing rises together and builds upon itself to create compelling moments. Lyrically we hear similar metaphorical devices deployed but I almost feel like this song is its own story entirely. The vivid lyrical imagery and body depictions make it a bit difficult to pin down the exact narrative of the song, but the thematic implications are clear. After this comes Mark's Theme and you can draw a line right after it ends to separate the album. Everything that's come so far on the record is great, truly spectacular. But across the final three songs it takes the next step into becoming something truly once in a lifetime special. 

The Place Where He Inserted The Blade once again deploys more upbeat sounds and lyrically Isaac dreams of his love with a chorus of bouncy keys backing him. However when you dive into the details this is an utterly fucking crushing song. It sounds so bombastic and even life affirming but the words Isaac sings detail how dreaming about these great moments in the past become so distorted when those little things are all you want anymore, but the one who provided them is gone. The way the instrumental shifts from discordant and contrasting on the verses to a singularly driving and bouncy sound for the bridge and hook is absolutely perfect. The dichotomy of the instrumental triumph and Isaac's anguish tells us that he is destined to wake up from his dream every time, it's a remarkable song with absolutely brilliant storytelling. 

Snow Globes was the most recent single and I called it one of the best things the band has ever done, which I completely stand by. It opens with this melancholic string arrangement drifting and swaying as the pounding percussion wails off in the distance all to lead up to one of Isaac's most dizzying lyrical metaphors to date. On the song he summons imagery of King Henry the fucking 8th and one of his wives to make a comparison to the relationship at the core of the album. It's a metaphor that really needs to be sold through the performance and Isaac gives it everything he fucking has from the perfectly neurotic little whispers to the absolute belting. It all adds up to another incredible moment. 

So this is a lot. I haven't leaned into the emotional turmoil of the record quite as much as I maybe should have so far but believe me getting to this point on the record is an extremely depressing and pessimistic journey. Let's take a brief emotional break. The closing track Basketball Shoes was originally a song all about having a wet dream while imagining Charli XCX. Isn't that kind of funny and quirky, a little off the beaten path. Hold onto that feeling because Basketball Shoes is the centerpiece of emotional disparity for the entire album. 

Isaac is frozen in time on the track, unable to move on from the very relationship that all of this is built to memorialize. The entire first verse of the song works over a busy string section showing that he can continue to go about his day to day life but just can't move on. The second verse returns much louder with booming drums, wiry electric guitar and lyrics about drowning in boyfriend jeans and "the clamp", a lyrical device we've heard the band deploy often. The song's final verse is where it most resembles its Charli XCX origins and really swings for the fences with a grandiose and extravagant instrumental arrangement to end the record off. On one hand the instrumentation and Isaac's flurrying refrains sometimes feel like relief, like a breath of life in the final moments. But if there's anything we've been taught over and over again by Ants From Up Here, it's that those good feelings are temporary and the crushing weight of abandonment, the isolation of co-dependence will always return. Just like the light static that remains the only sound left in the song for its final five seconds, unavoidable. 

Ants From Up Here is a wildly experimental and adventurous post-punk album that is built around the tragic poetry of a dejected narrator. It deals in lyrical themes of social isolation and dependence on a relationship that has faded away through the use of abstract and persistent metaphors. It all reminds me of another album I absolutely adore, Joy Division's Closer. The more I thought about it the more it made sense, the youthful ambition of the bands, the tragic vulnerability of the frontmen, the short timeframe from acclaimed genre defining debut to an even darker follow-up that improves on the formulas in every way. I don't make these comparisons lightly because I've long stated that Closer is one of my favorite albums of all time but since I had these thoughts I can't disconnect the two records in my head. When I said at the beginning of the review that all I wanted was for Isaac Wood to be okay, I did so because his departure from the band feels eerily timely in retrospect, given that Closer was released posthumously a few months after Ian Curtis' suicide. That helps us understand the pain he displays on Closer with far greater detail, and I never want to have to appreciate Ants in the same way. 

For all the talk of Isaac's brilliant, tragic and vivid lyricism on the album he is also backed by a band of relentlessly creative musicians who take these songs in drastically different directions on a whim, never faltering while doing so. The variety and versatility put on display by the album is core to the emotional whirlwind of an experience it delivers and I can't think of another project in a very long time that supports its stories with such strong compositions. Often guiding and occasionally contradicting, the instrumental palette of these songs informs the listener how to process the lyrics and when a change happens there's a reason for it. Everything about this album is brilliant and I feel confident in saying it's the best thing I've ever reviewed since I started doing this in 2016. Ants From Up There is a once in a decade success, maybe even once in a generation. I can marvel at the brilliance of its compositions and thematic touchstones all day, but in the end all I can hope for is that Isaac Wood finds a way to heal from all of this and that the band continues to make music as remarkable in his absence.  The virtuosity showed is only outdone by the vulnerability, but now all I can do is hope that the story of this album never gets any closer to Closer. 10/10

Album Cover Review by Tyler Judson:

I like this cover but it's missing some key things to make it great. The concept is cool and I love the rendering and composition. The color of the wall messes with the line of action slightly, mixing too much into the gold plane and keeping it from standout out as much as it should. There should be some kind of branding on it, could've been incorporated by having a sticker on the bad of plaque on the hook. Overall it's successful just needs some tweaks. 6.5/10

For more masterpiece theater check out my review of Little Simz' Sometimes I Might Be Introvert here