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Black Country, New Road

Black Country, New Road

Since 2018 · United Kingdom

Black Country, New Road formed in south London around 2018 from the remnants of an earlier band, expanding into a seven-piece with violin and saxophone alongside guitars, and quickly became one of the most acclaimed acts to emerge from the Windmill venue scene alongside black midi and Squid. Their story

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Who they shaped

Nobody on the map lists them as an influence yet.

Behind them, left to right: Fishmans, The Fall, The Velvet Underground, Arcade Fire, Can, Arthur Russell, Boris.

The bigger the face, the stronger the proof: they said it themselvesreporteda critic, or widely accepted

Ants From Up There cover

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Ants From Up There (2022)

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Ants From Up There builds slowly across its runtime, chamber-pop instrumentation swelling behind Isaac Wood's raw, half-spoken lyrics until the album's emotional weight becomes almost unbearable by its close. "The Place Where He Inserted the Blade" is that closing statement, a long, cathartic build that turns Wood's anxious wordplay into something closer to a farewell than a song. The band's violin and saxophone give the arrangements a klezmer-tinged warmth that keeps the record from tipping into pure bleakness. It remains one of the most emotionally direct records to come out of its scene, made more so by arriving just as the band that made it was ending.

Sleeve notes

Black Country, New Road

Ants From Up There · 2022

Black Country, New Road formed in south London around 2018 from the remnants of an earlier band, expanding into a seven-piece with violin and saxophone alongside guitars, and quickly became one of the most acclaimed acts to emerge from the Windmill venue scene alongside black midi and Squid. Isaac Wood's anxious, spoken-sung lyrics and the band's klezmer-inflected arrangements gave them a sound unlike any of their South London peers.

Ants From Up There arrived in 2022 just days after Wood announced he was leaving the band for his own mental health, an unusually bittersweet release that critics received as a landmark even as the lineup that made it had already ceased to exist in that form. The remaining members regrouped, splitting vocal duties among themselves rather than replacing Wood outright, and continued as a substantially different band. Few albums have arrived so directly bracketed by their own ending.

Since 2018 · United Kingdom

Played at

The Windmill Scene

Brixton, South London · 2016–now

On the bill

Formed a couple of years after black midi out of an earlier band's remnants, and became stage-mates and label-mates rather than direct followers — Georgia Ellery's parallel membership in Jockstrap tied the two bands together directly.

The whole scene