Ants from Down There
BLACK COUNTRY, New Road is a band that became quickly recognizable in the “post-punk revival” that emerged from a post-Brexit UK in the first couple years of the 2020’s. The 7-piece quickly gained notoriety for their experimental live shows. Their songs morphed from set to set, making fans and critics eager to hear what the band would be capable of in the studio.
Their first album For The First Time exceeded the hype, delivering a post-punk, art rock, klezmer jam full of nods to film noir and saturated in urban anxieties. Before their first album was even released, the band had already begun writing a second. For the First Time was a collection of songs; for their next album they wanted to write a cohesive piece based around a fan-favorite 12 minute epic that was played at almost every live show.
Just a year after For the First Time debuted, BC,NR released their follow up album Ants From Up There, a concept album which takes a much more sincere tone, largely shying away from the chaotic bravado of For the First Time. It favors classical elements, minimalism, and the softer side of free jazz. The tonal shift of Ants From Up There makes the songs more accessible and allows the poetic lyricism of Isaac Wood new places to explore. The songs are still filled with odd references to pop culture, household objects, and metaphors that are layered upon each other like baklava.
When interpreting the themes of this somber yet celebratory album, it’s hard not to take into account that guitarist and vocalist Isaac Wood released a statement that he would be leaving the band just days before the release. Upon my first listen, I saw many of the heartfelt moments through this lens, thinking the album was about him leaving.
While it’s easy to draw those connections, I ultimately realized this was a disservice to the story being told. It’s surely related, as is each layer of phyllo dough; there isn’t one layer that provides the satisfaction of the crunch. It is in fact the interplay which brings the magic. The restraint of the seven musicians using every space intentionally, the graceful reciprocity of the horns, guitars, sax, piano, mandolin, drums, violin, synth, bass and banjo along with the interconnected lyrical themes throughout the entire album make it a delicate work of art that feels best as a whole. The progression of the story is as important as any individual element.
The first two tracks bring considerable energy- a jazzy one minute instrumental leading directly into the Queen-inspired “Chaos Space Marine” that the band has repeatedly referred to as full of jokes and self-indulgences that allow them to be more restrained on the rest of the album (the lyrics and title of “Chaos Space Marine” are a reference to tabletop roleplaying game Warhammer 40K). While the openers are both lively and fun, it isn’t hard to see more than jokes in them. The foreshadowed themes open up later in the album as lyrical passages are revisited and recontextualized. The “joke” of the album might be what the band has described as a perfect pop song- three and a half minutes, sounds as if you had heard it before, and contains much more meaning than a pop song has the right to display.
“Chaos Space Machine” begins with the strong proclamation: “So I’m leaving this body/And I’m never coming homе again, yeah/I’ll bury the axe here/Between the window and the kingdom of men…” And ends with the snide, “So long chumps/I’m coming home”
This defiant escapism is followed by the indie rock ballad “Concorde” – part romantic gesture, part confession of codependency drenched in a gooey nostalgia. The chorus compares the subject of affection to the supersonic passenger jet Concorde that allowed 3 hour transatlantic flights between 1974 and 2003, while putting the narrator in the position of the much more modest “gentle hill racer”: “And you, like Concorde/I came, a gentle hill racer/I was breathless/Up on every mountain/Just to look for your light”
The juxtaposition is crucial to the recurring motifs of the album. He is beneath, looking above; we are ants from up there. It’s a reflexive and constitutional realization of unimportance.
Concorde as a metaphor and a character return throughout the album directly alongside broader themes of travel and technology. A toy concorde jet in a hanging plastic bag is featured as the album cover art. The feeling of chasing momentary magic is also a constant of the album with its dual tones of heroism and desperation. Just as “Chaos Space Machine” did, “Concorde” ends at a moment of faith and resolve despite its bitter, broken tone throughout.
But I know that you’ll be there
The Sandman inside
And I’ll come to like a child
And Concorde and I
Die free this time
“Bread Song” is a despondent fever dream that focuses heavily on the limits of communication and intimacy. The narrative starts with a strained relationship where the narrator naively blames technology itself for the poor communication. The chorus shows a longing for intimacy while also being aware of the problems deep intimacy can cause. The disturbing insight is how hard it is to truly share the deepest part of yourself with another without those parts destroying the relationship that allows them to be shared.
Don’t eat your toast in my bed
Oh darling, I
I never felt the crumbs until you said
This place is not for any man
Nor particles of bread
More than three minutes in, after the first chorus, the percussion becomes louder and much more rhythmic in the mix. The tone shifts to and maintains a sort of frustration rather than the desperation that has characterized the one-sided relationship so far.
“Good Will Hunting” opens with a warm synth swell that rhymes with the sound of a jet taking off followed by an upbeat rhythm, giving a clear break from the headspace of Bread Song. Here the narrator has firmly recognized his dependency.
You walk up on the raised edge, hands out for balance
Slip and you almost grab mine but you find your feet
And I never wanted so much someone to fall
As the song progresses, it offers catchy hooks with delicate instrumental interludes stitching them together. The narrator sounds almost manic at points, aware of the ridiculous lengths he would go to in order to be needed by this person. Yet he’s still chasing her and searching for that grand gesture that would make him worthy.
And if we’re on a burning starship
The escape pods
Filled with your friends
Your childhood film photos
There’s no room for me to go
Oh, I’d wait there
Float with the wreckage
Fashion a long sword
Traverse the Milky Way
Trying to get home to you
And you bring some piece of the stars
“Haldern” is a lullaby for the desperate. It slowly swells and crashes back down as the last racing thoughts before sleep evaporate into unconscious ruminations. He is aware that he has shared too much and regrets opening up with his insecurities and need for intimacy. Doing so has only deepened his self-doubt and made the desire to be understood seem even more unattainable.
Ignore the hole I’ve dug again
It’s only for the evening
I never wanted you to see that much
Of the bodies down there beneath me
The instrumentals move from soft guitar into the sax and piano trade-offs that carry most of the song. We are confronted with the deep shame that often comes alongside desperation and a cruel realization that those able to cause us the most pain are also able to give us the most comfort.
“Mark’s Theme” is a warm and sweet instrumental just under three minutes that operates as a good passage from the first part of the album to the last three songs, each an epic in their own right.
“The Place Where He Inserted The Blade” is a simultaneous moment of catharsis and a regression of thinking. The chorus and ending refrain bring to mind giant sing-alongs with moments of sitcom nostalgia and childhood dreams. Our narrator is especially anxious but also more open than we have seen him before. He wants to share a deeper emotional connection but can’t move past his own trauma and desire to be needed. He can’t function without the direction of someone else, and left to his own devices begins losing himself while destroying his connections and home. This song also brings some religious symbolism that has been present from the background into the light.
Show me the place where he inserted the blade
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/Good morning
The song also highlights another important aspect of the album – the shifting of time and emotional perspective. The narrative on this track and the rest on the album seems to be happening everywhere except the present. The intensity of past and future “presents” are burning too brightly to see what’s in front of us. We hear of making lunch, childhood, being tired, and not sleeping all while “good morning’’ is repeated throughout the chorus as an anchoring point that seems to make everything okay again. It’s a new day after all. This time shift matches well with the ambiguity of the central failing relationship throughout the album- the uncertainty (even to the narrator) if it is an unhealthy relationship, an unrequited daydream, or a love the narrator is unable to keep and therefore cannot move past.
“Snow Globes” is a three minute build up into a warm crooning story about someone named Henry that has a strange shrine that notably looks nothing like Jesus. The story is a cryptic tale shaded somewhere between sympathy and pity, until the drums come into the mix in a way that sounds almost as if the listener is in the drumkit itself as it plays a chaotic solo very different from the calm music also being heard. The refrain continues,
Oh god of weather, Henry knows
Snowglobes don’t shake on their own
in a tone that reads simultaneously as a plea on Henry’s behalf and an adopted mantra- the showcasing of faith to gain stability.
“Basketball Shoes” is the 12-plus minute closing track the album has been building to. It was the blueprint for the album and where the themes stemmed from according to the band. Built out of three main passages with instrumentals throughout, this is the first time the narrator seems to be, if not already moving on, finding the desire to move on and be honest about the destructive nature of his idolization of Concorde while acknowledging the pain of moving on.
“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 great”
Almost seven minutes into the track, a midwest emo guitar riff comes out of nowhere as the song gets much louder with a sickly sweetness to it that borders on sarcastic. We hear of the thrill of new love, before exploding in an admittance that he is still tortured. We then slowly come back with an anthemic build into the final leg of the song, reminiscent of early Wolf Parade as group vocals explode and Issac gets his loudest and closest to screaming as he belts the final lyrics,
In my bed sheets now wet
Of Charlie I pray to forget
All I’ve been forms the drone/We sing the rest
Ah, your generous loan to me/Your
crippling interest
Though there is the obvious reference to wet dreams, we are also reminded that the bed sheets could be wet from tears or sweat. The generous loan, I believe, is emotional intimacy, making the crippling interest the dark side of sharing insecurities with another and the way it changes both people. In our day and age, without a jubilee and surrounded by a shallow form of positivity, we are never able to get back to feelings we once had. We are forever indebted to those around us that have opened up to us or that we have opened ourselves to. We build shrines and idealize those important to us to the point that when their sainthood becomes deniable it is a tremendous loss.
Ants From Up There is a well-crafted recognition of smallness, insecurity, and fragility. It’s an ode to faith in something bigger than all of it- even if that faith is often expressed in an unhealthy way. Themes of travel, flight, and light gain spiritual importance as codependency is wrestled with and hard truths are swallowed. In an interview band members (referring to the themes of travel) said that they were explorers and the human heart is the final frontier before immediately laughing at themselves and calling it a joke. I suspect it is a joke much in the same way the song “Chaos Space Marine” is a joke, one full of much deeper meaning than it has the right to express.
Ants From Up There is an album showcasing the tension between holiness and being full of holes, reflection and being lost in thought, faith and wishful thinking, and mostly between the perspective of time and the raw immediacy of the moment. Recently a friend showed me a drawing she had been working on and described it as “finished, well not finished but finished with feeling unfinished” and that to me summed up the triumphant sadness of Ants... The resolution is bittersweet, but cathartic nonetheless. We are left with a longing and belief in wholeness that somehow recognizes all of the holes instead of trying to fill them.
Adam Ray Adkins is a visual artist, glitch artist and poet based out of St. Petersburg, FL. He left Memphis, TN to join and help build various art and work collectives around the country and has been an active and passionate force in radical community activism and post-industrial social survival. His work and art embody a playful and sometimes mischievous challenge to norms of commodification, ownership, and form.