February 2022 was an absurdly excellent month for music. Many artists, like Mitski and Animal Collective, released highly anticipated albums that did not disappoint. The month’s best music, like the pastoral indie folk of Big Thief’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You and Beach House’s lush dream pop on Once Twice Melody, will undoubtedly be highlights of the year. Either of these would easily be my favorite album in virtually any other month. However, February saw the release of Black Country, New Road’s Ants From Up There, a melancholic art rock epic that has quickly become one of my favorite albums of all time.
Ants From Up There is the sophomore album from Cambridge-based post-rock band Black Country, New Road. Part of the burgeoning Windmill post-punk scene in and around London, BC,NR was a breath of fresh air for rock music when they arrived in 2019 with two singles: “Sunglasses” and “Athens, France”. Combining impressive technical skills with passionate soliloquies from frontman Isaac Woods, BC, NR undeniably made an impression on audiences. They followed through on the hype with their 2021 debut album, For the first time, showcasing an incredible blend of Slint-esque experimental rock and klezmer. On Ants From Up There, they completely revamp their sound, giving way to an indie rock and chamber pop mix more akin to Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens than Joy Division and Sonic Youth. The change-up works in their favor, as Black Country, New Road delivers an astoundingly devastating album with Ants From Up There.
After an instrumental track introducing the album’s central motivic riff, the first song, “Chaos Space Marine” opens in media res as Isaac Woods sings over a hammering piano: “And though England is mine/I must leave it all behind.” Having spent his entire life in England, Woods finds that with BC,NR’s growing popularity, it’s time to travel the world. He’s moving on, just as one might reluctantly leave a long-term relationship. In the second verse, he wonders, “Love they made here, will it really last?… So what? I love you.” Having started a new relationship, he worries that the love he feels will eventually fade away, but he presently ignores this fear because of the overwhelming love he feels at that moment. This feeling of freedom from worry is exemplified in the chorus, where Woods shouts, “So I’m leaving this body/And I’m never coming home again.” Unconcerned with seemingly pointless troubles, like taking care of his body, Woods dedicates himself to going wherever his lover may go.
These themes of dedication and freedom are explored more in the next track, “Concorde”, where the album’s central metaphor is also introduced. Between 1976 and 2003, the British and French governments collaborated on creating a supersonic airline called Concorde. Originally estimated to cost £70 million, the project ended up costing nearly £2.1 billion. However, the governments kept funneling money into the project, unwilling (or unable) to accept their sunk cost. Thus, in economics, the Concorde fallacy refers to the investment of further funds into a failed project with the justification that one has already put so much into the project, so whatever can be done to potentially salvage the project must be done. Isaac Woods extrapolates the idea of the Concorde fallacy to a failing relationship, comparing the Concorde planes to a lover to whom he’s devoted so much time and energy. The chorus of “Concorde” paints a clear picture of this dilemma:
And you, like Concorde
I came, a gentle hill racer
I was breathless
Upon every mountain
Just to look for your light
Woods imagines his lover as a plane effortlessly flying above him as he, “breathless”, climbs to the highest hills and mountains hoping to see the “light” or love that he seeks. From here, we arrive at the title of the album. To Woods, Concorde is everything: the light of his sky, what he seeks above (not a God, but the love of Concorde). But to Concorde above, Isaac below is barely a speck on the ground, indistinguishable from anyone else. To Concorde, we’re all just ants from up there.
The next few tracks including “Bread Song”, “Good Will Hunting”, and “Haldern” are arguably the weakest tracks of the album, but these are still amazing songs that I cannot recommend enough. They expand the background of this relationship, revealing that, for some time, it has been a long-distance relationship sustained over video calls and text messages. For brevity’s sake, I am not going to analyze them here, but I want to include the first verse of “Good Will Hunting” just to demonstrate how Woods’s lyrics manage to be both incredibly specific and universally relatable:
You walk up on the raised edge
Hands out for balance.
You slip, and you almost grab mine, but you find your feet
And I never wanted so much someone to fall.
It’s just been a weekend
But in my mind
We summer in France
With our genius daughters now
And you teach me to play the piano.
Woods’s lyrics across the album are consistently astounding, and there is truly not a single line that feels out-of-place or forced.
The final three tracks on Ants From Up There–“The Place Where He Inserted The Blade”, “Snow Globes”, and “Basketball Shoes”–are simply incredible. Each of these tracks has a genuine claim to being the greatest song of all time, and I am left speechless every time I listen to them. In “The Place Where He Inserted The Blade”, Woods acknowledges that his relationship is unhealthy and that he is being manipulated as he sings, “You tied me up slow with your vine stuff.” Even trying to move away from his Concorde, he still feels bound to her. He laments: “Every time I try to make lunch/For anyone else, in my head/I end up dreaming of you.” While this may sound like a romantic declaration of dedication, it is clear from his tone that he feels trapped in this relationship. He describes his dependency on Concorde, singing, “I’ll praise the Lord, burn my house/I get lost, I freak out/You come home, and hold me tight/As if it never happened at all.” He dedicates himself to his lover to the point of exasperation, but feels like his efforts are almost ignored when his lover comes home and acts as if Isaac’s suffering “never happened at all”.
On “Snow Globes”, Woods elevates his romantic struggles to religious proportions, seemingly singing from the perspective of a friend. This friend, worried about Isaac, notes, “That’s a funny looking shrine on your bedroom wall.” The friend notices that Isaac views the Concorde as a figure to be revered. He criticizes this near-religious admiration by saying that the Concorde “doesn’t look anything like Jesus at all.” Aside from referencing the Killers’s song “When We Were Young”, this line acts as a wake-up call for Isaac as he realizes that he has been worshiping Concorde. He’s not in love with her as a person, but rather with the idea of her as some unattainable figure to strive for.
The final track, “Basketball Shoes”, is breathtaking. A song in three parts, it covers the full range of emotions Isaac has experienced throughout his relationship with Concorde, from ecstasy to desperation. He begins the song by acknowledging the damage that the relationship has caused: “Concorde flies through my room/Tears the house to shreds.” But he has dedicated himself to rebuilding; he’s “feeling kinda normal” and “working on [himself]”. Isaac, though feeling more like himself, doesn’t feel good necessarily. He sings, “So if you see me looking strange with a fresh style/I’m still not feeling that great.” He’s spent so much time changing himself for Concorde that when he finally returns to himself, it’s “strange”. Finally ending the long distance relationship, Isaac notes, “We never look at our phones anymore.” The only connection between Isaac and Concorde has disappeared, and Isaac is left alone in his destroyed room.
The second part of the track delves into the feelings Isaac felt at the beginning of his relationship with Concorde, singing “Oh, I haven’t felt this way in, like, ever.” Knowing what comes later in the relationship, it’s an almost tragic section. However, amidst the growing pains of moving on from a breakup, it also serves as a reminder of the thrill of new love. The highlight of the entire album comes in the third part of “Basketball Shoes”:
In my bedsheets, now wet
Of Charlie, I pray to forget.
All I’ve been forms the drone,
We’ll sing the rest.
Oh, your generous loan to me
Your crippling interest.
Crying in his bed, Isaac no longer prays to his Concorde, or Charlie, shrine. He prays to forget. He prays to be relieved of the immense pain he feels. But either way, it’s in his past. It’s part of the unchanging drone that forms the foundation for his future. Instead of dwelling on the past any longer, he decides to “sing the rest” and take charge of his future. Charlie gave a “generous loan” to Isaac. She gave him comfort and feelings of love, even if she never truly loved him. She showed him the light. But that loan comes with “crippling interest”. The more love Isaac received, the more he had to put in, until he realized that he wasn’t getting nearly enough back. Isaac would never be able to pay his debt.
Over ten tracks, Ants From Up There attempts to answer the question “Is love worth it?” Despite the overwhelming sadness of much of the album, I believe Isaac ultimately decides that yes, love is worth it. His relationship with Charlie may have brought pain, but it also brought tremendous growth. It fed the drone of the past, helping Isaac build a stronger foundation for his future. By recognizing that most relationships, romantic or otherwise, will end, he’s taken the first steps to acknowledging his own mortality. Isaac realizes that nearly everything ends eventually. In “Concorde”, he sings: “Concorde and I/Die free this time.” In this line, the album’s larger theme of death is revealed. Isaac knows that he cannot control everything, and accepts the natural end of things. Through this acceptance, he will be left to focus on controlling the aspects of his future that he’s able to. Having died free with Concorde, Isaac will die free every time.
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