Spotlight: Black Country, New Road's New Album 'Ants From Up There'

Launched just two weeks back, UK collective Black Country, New Road's genre-melting sophomore album Ants From Up There has already provoked much chatter around the water cooler, with multiple reliable local music experts (shout out to ex-UTR staffer Hunter Keane and Pickle Darling) praising it as one of 2022's must-hear long players. Singer Isaac Wood's departure from the group only days before the release of Ants From Up There made international headlines, prompting BC,NR to hit pause on immediate tour plans — surely a nightmare scenario for a high profile, critically revered unit. Thankfully the rest of the band confirm they're moving forwards as a six-piece, although it's understandably unlikely we'll see any fresh live footage emerge in the immediate future.

Dramas aside, Ants From Up There exhibits a taste for adventure and wide-ranging scope much too rare in our current torched and bland, playlist-friendly popular music landscape, sensitively sculpting new shapes from elements of prog, avant-rock, lush baroque-pop and haunted folk. If you're somehow a little late to Black Country, New Road's record (for example, if you hypothetically just returned home from a bach holiday on Waiheke Island with no Wi-Fi *ahem*), now's the perfect time to jump on board. Take a sonic journey with Ants From Up There and experience the eyebrow-raising twists and turns of their video for 'Concorde' below...

'Ants From Up There' is out now on vinyl LP, cassette, compact disc and digitally via Ninja Tune.