Black Country, New Road demand sympathy. Sympathy to bring the shivering vocalist in from the rain. Sympathy to hear contextual lyrics and feel something ubiquitous. Sympathy to hear extended baroque metaphor and feel simplicity. ‘Ants From Up There’ will uproot the time capsule in which you placed your disconsolate nostalgia. It is strangely mollifying to hear emotional infirmity expressed through the simple acts of, say, eating in bed; when sad, we do not stand atop a mountain, pensively looking down at a valley below. We materially transgress, breathing restlessly through dismantled days. Isaac Wood knows this and writes obsessively. The band supported him like a hammock.
28/30
A favourite: ‘The Place Where He Inserted the Blade’
‘Ants From Up There’ is available now via @ninjatune
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