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It seemed pretty poetic that the closest article there is to celebrate the first year anniversary of this blog is based around Black Country, New Road. Last year, the very first review I’ve done is on their debut in For The First Time that’s released on February 2^nd. I’ve enjoyed that immensely for their peculiar take on the British post-punk explosion through strong improvisational instrumentation & a spoken-word vocal performance that draws a lot of comments around it being similar to Slint. Follow the band for a while & you’ll find that they’re not at all interested in being the embodiment of the rough-edged scene. Much like their compatriots in black midi, they aspire to be bigger. The one that is synonymous with the word ‘indie’ even if their specialisation leans more toward post-rock. They want to be the next Arcade Fire.

To achieve that goal, that requires a lot of adjustments & that is always a delicate obstacle for the band & their fans. To go from being possessing a certain whine & a chaotic sense of improvisation to instead opt for grandeur & sentimentality feels like a big jump into another territory. Nevertheless, the band’s middle-class background proves to be the groundwork that’s needed to keep the transition afloat even if that might lead to some accusation around them being industry plants being thrown around frequently. They have shelved a couple of songs from their foundational years from 2019 which will resurface later on in this record. As far as the thesis of the project goes, it’s to make, in an interview with NME, their next record will be “sad, epic, and possibly more universally likeable” than the debut.

Alterations is made to make the drafts more literary, more emotional, more heart-wrenching. All to try & cut ties with what could be summed up as scandalous confessions that had once been ex-frontman Isaac Wood’s selling point as the lyricist. One song is adjusted to divert away from the overt sexual lust around a certain musician to avoid a big clash of reaction. Meanwhile, a predominantly instrumental cut takes on a more lyrical route to fit in with the motifs of the whole project. 1 song is introduced a year before For the First Time’s release with a bit of polishing up to make it at its best while a snippet of instrumental performance makes way toward a new single. There is, without a doubt, a bittersweet feeling to all of this endeavour as only days before the release of Ants from Up There, the band’s social media account announced Wood’s departure with mental health being the main reason. Just how big of a deal is Ants from Up There.

I would like to concede that I have listened to this on repeat the whole day as soon as I heard it the first time in its entirety on the day of its release. This album is actually a legitimate masterpiece as a bricolage of both sophisticated & experimental directions. This review is going to be very chunky & by the end, I wouldn’t be surprised if a paragraph is to be made about each song on the album – including the 2 instrumental intervals even. Get ready for what might’ve been one of the biggest articles I have written on the basis of just a review.

The intro of the album takes on a minimalist structure alike to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. The build-up in between the barrage of Lewis Evan’s saxophone & flute with Georgia Ellery’s stringed accomplices followed up with the slow deep guitar notes before it abruptly erupts into a triumphant salvo of instruments, each of the timbre adding into the mix that feels cathartic. In a nutshell, what a way to kickstart the whole album.

Enter ‘Chaos Space Marine’; the most accessible track in the album at a cosy length of just under 5 minutes with an accented charm that’s alike to a Britpop song. The convergence of the sax, violin, & drumming in the beginning is cut by the frantic piano playing as Isaac Wood sings out his signature blend of the glorious & the burlesque. Note that compared to his spoken-word delivery in the last record, this album sees him more enthusiastic & confident in his vocal performance & while that doesn’t take away the distinction of his previous record, it helps to make the song so much fun! The chorus with the vocal harmonies only serves to drive the fervour onward & the kick drum from Charlie Wayne adds a sense of tension without taking away from the energetic performance from the rest. The reference to Warhammer 3000 & Billie Eilish shouldn’t have work as well as it did because while pop culture references does pose the risk of being outdated, this instance only adds to the sensation of the track. In a nutshell – just bloody enjoyable & it serves as proof that the band can pull off more in their style than just food for brood.

‘Concorde’ is a highlight for a good reason as while it’s another accessible single, it manages to find a way to get your attention for 6 minutes while it’s essentially a slow ballad about a distant, one-sided love affair. The way in which the lead guitar follows a simple sequence of notes while Tyler Hyde’s bass accompanies the last few before it loops back around adds to the bittersweet feeling of it. The metaphor of the airplane is brilliant as Isaac sung his fears outward: Concorde, I miss you/ Don’t text me ‘til winter/ I can hardly afford a second summer of splinters” The mandolin only adds to the sadness of the track & as the track builds up onto one final climax, the harmonies & the textures spring itself to life as Isaac comes to the realisation that he must leave his unrequited feelings behind to find new bonds to make. The droning that comes from the mixing of the guitars & the bass after the outro adds a theatrical sense of a new start to be made that’s supplemented by the classical piano, horns, & mandolin. Pretty impressive I would say.

‘Bread Song’ takes on a different route of unrequited love as despite its title, it revolves around a crumbling online relationship. The hypnotic fingerpicking style on the guitar keeps the whole track together with the violin & the bass being mixed down to not take away the attention from the lamentation. The first instance of the chorus has the saxophone & the piano have their mixing go up as to capture the desperation in trying to amend a futile relationship. In the words of Isaac before the song flips on its head in the second half: “I never felt the crumbs until you said/ ‘This place is not for any man/ Nor particles of bread”. Enter the drums from Charlie Wayne to take the guitar’s place & all of a sudden, a timer is set in as the narrative goes from a sad rumination of what could’ve been to a frantic realisation on what should’ve been. Realising how much he craves for a physical touch from his lover, Isaac’s delivery on the final chorus is cut down by the ascension of the crescendo, symbolising the inevitability that such relationship will eventually fail from the one thing that neither are able to fulfil.

‘Good Will Hunting’, a reference to a beloved film that challenges the correlation between class & talent, loops back to the jocose sensation of ‘Chaos Space Marine’. Now with synths from May Kershaw, you’d be left wondering whether this song will be an underground hit in the future for how heartfelt it feels. From a name drop to Billie Eilish again to a tongue-in-cheek fantasy around settling down with a loved one on top of shout-outs to a couple of other film cliches, you can tell that there’s a bit of toying around to be had on a love song. Add in a cutesy backing vocal from Georgia Ellery in pre-chorus, sprinkle in a futuristic synths for the chorus & the intertwined twinkly guitar playing from Wood & Luke Mark & you end up having a pretty big grower of a poppy deep cut. I would honestly go as far as to say that it might have a good chance to be seen in the same light as ‘Concorde’; a pretty likeable song that is accessible in its own way without having to confine in the usual formula.

‘Haldern’ is originally titled ‘For the Evening’ which has been made from an improvisation session. While there’s signs of Isaac’s troubling mental health throughout the previous albums (e.g. the Berlin reference in ‘Good Will Hunting’ which refers to Billie Eilish’s infamous anecdote), this is among the most viscerally vulnerable points in the whole album. Sticking to the whole chamber pop sound with Lewis Evans, May Kershaw, & Georgia Ellery playing for the majority of the track, the desire for love is comparable to ‘Bread Song’. However the tragedy is all the more apparent due to how strong the implication is that the anguish of the narrator is what drives his loved one away not just physically, but also spiritually. When he almost screeches out “you rose out through the ceiling”, there is no turning back as in a rather religious manner, her ascension to Heaven contrasts with him remaining on Earth speaks volume on a certain type of suffering that can’t be remedied by the ideal. The next few tracks is going to be a bit of a bumpy ride for certain.

‘Mark’s Theme’ is the only track aside from the very intro that’s entirely instrumental & in this case, it’s Lewis Evans’s time to shine on the horns alongside some gorgeous piano playing by May Kershaw. Following the melody that feels like a farewell to a bygone friend, it’s written in dedication to Evans’s uncle who passed away from Covid. As the instrumental continues to swell, the layering of the horns continue to amplify a eulogistic atmosphere, leading in on the past that will never return… before the end that is with a humming of another tune. The light-heartedness is still there.

Now for the biggie – ‘The Place Where He Inserted the Blade’ which is inspired by Bob Dylan’s recent outputs although the way that it’s been set up reminds me a bit of Tom Waits with his jumbling up of disparate genres. On one hand, the chamber pop sounds that is apparent is still there, yet the vocal delivery of Isaac Woods & the climatic vocal harmony is reminiscent of the cabaret performance. The theme of the song should’ve placed the song into the category of a power ballad with its heartache, but the subtext is doused in co-dependency & melodrama around cooking tutorials. There is always the edge towards an instrumental solo, yet the post-rock codex never falters so the cohesion remains as it does. Expanding on some lyrical bits is on another couple of pop culture references to Kanye West & perhaps to the Mountain Goats even, the attack on sentimental romance remains at the core with the suspense of explosion being on a balance. All in all? The dark horse contender of one of the album’s best songs & we’ve yet to touch on the last 2 songs yet.

‘Snow Globes’ is cathartic. It really is one of the most cathartic examples of a crescendo that I have ever listened to thanks to its simple intertwining guitar tab, swooning saxophone, the gradual build-up in the violin & backing vocals, & perchance the strongest vocal performance from Isaac Wood yet. Everyone is on their A-game in this track as through the organs & the sentimentality, the ascension makes for a chilling journey. This is also where the lyricism is at its most potent as Isaac sings about a character named Henry who tries to find his way back home, yet a certain religious tribulation sets him back from doing so & through that, the abstract metaphor has been established. The titular snow globe is probably a metaphor of all of Henry’s memories, his opinions, & his understandings on how the world works, all swirling around him on his Sisyphean ordeal amidst the thunderous improvisational drumming from Charlie Wayne. The crescendo continues to grow & grow until it’s a storm that’s waiting to burst, unleashing all of the emotions into one of the most spine-chilling experience of the year, if not the decade depending on how things go.

At the end of the journey, we reach the centrepiece of the whole album – the strangely titled ‘Basketball Shoes’. For years, fans of the band have hyped it up as being a magnum opus in the making & in a way, perhaps even the crowning achievement of the British outburst of promising underground rock act. Now, the studio version have not faltered in a single bit. Made up of multiple segments that adopt different genres all the way throughout the song’s duration. This reaches to the point where in an interview with Fader, the band have confirmed that nearly all of the songs had taken some cues from ‘Basketball Shoes’ during the album’s production. That should tell you how big of a deal this song is.

This might take a bit of breaking up due to the many parts that it contains. Starting with a 3-minute crescendo that the band have all but mastered to its very core, the lyrics could be best described as a stream-of-consciousness in growth & introspection, looking back at a home that’s destroyed by a Concorde while comparing himself to that of a stick insect. The feeling of fragility, especially with Isaac’s departure from the band to focus on his mental health, speaks volume about the sense of anxiety that he must be feeling. Yes, the instrumentation is brilliantly played all the way through, but I can’t help but feel like this song captures a certain feeling about Isaac really well from a lyrical perspective. In a way, he conjures up a kind of character that is very much so like him, but that ‘Isaac’ is microcosmic of a lot of young adult Brits. The many turmoil that they might have to deal with in the future is very apparent in the subtext as shown in the first part of the song.

“And I’m feeling kinda normal with a packed lunch

Train rides don’t hurt much these days

We’re all working on ourselves, and we’re praying

that the rest don’t mind how much we’ve changed

So if you see me looking strange with a fresh style

I’m still not feeling that greatest

And it’s in soft-focus all around you

You can’t see the football game

On my dad’s sofa, we are still, and we never look at our phones anymore.”

Black Country, New Road. ‘Basketball Shoes” – part 1. Ants from Up There.

This is some serious free-verse poetry stuff so I might as well break it down for some interpretation bonus. The colloquial language & the plural pronouns is indicative of a romantic relationship, yet the previously mentioned bits of anxiousness engenders some kind of co-dependency that’s masqueraded with a star-crossed impression. Lines like ‘the rest don’t mind how much we’ve changed’ hammers home the fear not only of themselves, but also even meta-textually around how the band will stand in their innovations compared to the greats like the Beatles. A generational gap if you will & with the amount of expectation there is, it’s hard to not empathise with all that effort being put into the record. The subtle magic realism in ‘it’s in soft-focus all around you’ puts into perspective both the wonders & the disappointment that entails with living especially with a mental illness. The last line helps to tie back into the sense of distant feelings; an ironic subversion of a typical stereotype on phone usage as suggesting a lack of intimacy. Here, it seems like the ‘Isaac’ in this song & his love interest have only each other, but they can’t connect together. They’re in a stalemate with nothing to get themselves out of it.

However, it’s not only the lyricism that is worth geeking out about. Remember the bricolage comment that I’ve made in the beginning? This song breathes it all the way through with a variety of genres & influences. The first part takes on an Arcade Fire-esque sense of dissonant chamber influence that’s remodelled into being a post-rock build-up. The sung verses however is underpinned by a bit of slowcore that traverses on into a rather baroque sense of extravagance. The second part switches up with the no-wave post-punk sound that the band have since largely abandoned with an abrupt cut to a twee pop part that is much like Belle & Sebastian. Yet again does the dissonance between it & the subtext of mental health is there & as Isaac sings out the complexity of his love, the insanity continues to carry on…

All that for the most soul-lifting climax in the whole album. The textures of all of the instruments grouping up to make a mechanical, indistinguishable ball of sound that’s accompanied by a chant. As Isaac finishes the song, & the album by extension, by professing his sexual frustrations, the build-up continues to carry on. First with a saxophone, then the dissonant guitars, then the violins & the pianos pour on through with the chant as well. The cumulative effect is nothing short of extraordinarily overwhelming. Everything that the whole album has been working on towards have all paid off in this moment. Even if the textures do end up imploding on itself in the last few seconds, I can’t help but feel that this is easily one of the moments that I have enjoyed so much. Almost breathtaking.

To put it simply, do yourself a favour & listen to it now. Chances are, you might not believe in the hype. You might consider to be overrated or that the rougher-edged sounds in For the First Time is more befitting of the band. Maybe it might not be the direction that you’d hope that the band might take. However, I can’t but get the feeling that this record could easily weave its way into my heart as being one of my favourites of all time, up there with The Meadowlands or Illmatic for sure. If you’ve never heard of the band or their music before, why not start here? After all, it’s the very sound that they wanted to try out & as far as what I could say about it, it’s definitely the one that could open a new door for the British scene to look into.