Ants from down here

By Eli Thayer

I’ve been thinking of adjectives to describe Ants From Up There, the new album from London rock band Black Country, New Road, but the one I keep coming back to is unbelievable. As someone who has lost years of his life trying to find steady drummers for various projects, it’s astounding to me that seven instrumentalists this creative, talented, and dedicated were able to find one another, stick together, and create a work of art as stunningly gorgeous as Ants. From the cabaret singalongs of ‘Chaos Space Marine’ and ‘The Place Where He Inserted the Blade’, to the post-rock drum freakout on ‘Snow Globes’, to the emo-pop perfection of ‘Good Will Hunting’, to the intense grandiosity of ‘Concorde’ and ‘Basketball Shoes’, it really is an astonishing work of art.

Ants is an inspirational achievement, but amidst all the mind-blowing, I’m left with a sense of self-doubt that I often feel encroaching after I experience great art. Can it be done better than this? Who am I to create in the face of an epochal work such as this, one for which all the stars seemingly had to align to facilitate its making? It’s a question I run into sometimes, and it inevitably leaves me in a strange state of writing for a few days, one in which nearly everything I write is inspired by the art, but even though some of it might be good, the shadow hanging over it prevents me from perceiving it as such. Eventually I escape the initial obsession and return to my usual writing approach, but the shadow leaves me thinking. Ideally, Ants will settle into the recesses of my mind, and little fragments of it will from time to time wander out and nestle into my own music, enough to add a new element to a song, but not so much as to overwhelm the sound and invoke that dreaded word, “derivative”. In reality, however, finding that balance is tricky, and my songs often wind up with either far too much of an influence, or none at all. The great bassist Jaco Pastorious was known for his tone: a clear, heavily accented pluck that was immediately distinguishable from every other prominent bassist in jazz. Many consider his sound to be the pinnacle of bass tone, yet virtually none have since tried to replicate it. Jaco’s sound was so distinct that to even approach it is to be buried in accusations of unoriginality--an attempt to emulate the master falling predictably short. 

Listening to Ants gives me a similar sense of trepidation. Adding strings and horns to epic experimental rock guitar songs sounds amazing and makes me want to try it myself, but if this is the trend’s artistic peak, I don’t want to be another nameless casualty of the landslide of imitators to follow. So how, then, can one attempt to achieve that balance of influence? For me, at least, it starts with a certain level of self-confidence. I have to trust that I have something that makes my songs sound like mine, just as the members of Black Country, New Road possess individual quirks that coalesce into something definitively theirs. I like to distill this idea into an exercise: take an artist with an easily definable sound--say, early Weezer--and try to write a song as close to that style as possible. No matter how close you get, the song you write will never sound exactly like its source, even if only for the reason that your voice doesn’t sound like Rivers Cuomo’s (unless it does, in which case: condolences, I’m out of ideas). I don’t feel the need to analyze the song I’ve written to discern what specifically distinguishes it; I can be content knowing I have a new song that I can now start chipping away at to form into something truly my own. 

Next, I try to come to terms with the emotions of inspiration: why listening to this album makes me want to create, and in what ways I hope to do so. When the band rises and falls together like the most natural of ocean waves on ‘Bread Song’, I yearn for that wordless connection. When Isaac Wood defiantly shouts “Your generous loan to me / Your crippling interest”, seemingly directly to his ever-ravenous audience, I am simultaneously entranced by the brevity in which he wrapped such a complex feeling, and perplexed at how someone could wish to be emancipated from the adrenaline of performance, the blessing that is making music for a living. These achievements are intimidating, but they also pose questions that need answering. It is the audience’s role not simply to intake art, but to consider and engage with it. Art has always been a dialogue--no masterpiece was ever birthed solely from the input of one individual, no matter how often I need to remind myself of that fact. Listening to Ants compels me to respond; either directly, as in this essay, or indirectly, such as in a song that utilizes its sonic palette, or debates its lyrical premises, or even rejects its influence entirely. In avoiding his domain, Jaco’s successors acknowledged his accomplishments and engaged with them by moving on to distinct, unexplored territory. Deference is still dialogue. This is not to say that I believe Ants to be an unattainable pinnacle of the style, but it is more to show the myriad ways in which influence can manifest. Music scares us, but also instructs us to respond. Why it does so, and how to formulate that response are questions that demand critical engagement with the work itself.

For me, critical engagement with a song begins analytically. I have a music theory background, so while listening to a song, I’m often mapping out the chord progression and the contour of the melody in my head. If I notice something particularly harmonically intriguing, I’ll rewind it, playing along with my guitar to try and figure out exactly what’s going on. Lyrically, I don’t have quite as defined a process, but a quick scroll down a Genius page is fun for getting inside people’s heads and seeing how they approach a song. These are just ideas, though--everyone experiences and engages with art differently, and what comes naturally to me might be totally alien to someone else. Additionally, my method has obvious holes, and isn’t as applicable for some songs. With Ants, for example, I had to adjust, as the record is fairly straightforward harmonically. Most of its musical intricacies are based in rhythm--especially the drum parts--and the interactions between instruments, which are so expertly composed as to often present an approachable facade that masks underlying precision and complexity. That challenge and separation from what I typically work with might be part of why I’m drawn to Ants so strongly.

 For the lyrical content, I stopped myself short of conducting a full line-by-line investigation because, while tempting, I decided it wouldn’t be the best use of my time. Instead, I picked out little things that stood out while I was listening--turns of phrase, repeated motifs, how much intensity Wood assigned to certain lines--and made mental notes of each one. I noticed the things I liked, I briefly reflected on why I liked them, and I moved on, allowing them to join the sea of things-I-like-but-don’t-want-to-think-about-constantly in the back of my mind. Sometimes they bubble up to the top and briefly remind me of their beauty before sinking back down again. Words, and the feelings they inspire, are hard to quantify. So instead of trying, I let them marinate while I go about my life, and I hope that maybe, when I next sit down to write, a splash of their essence will trickle into my work.

Black Country, New Road has stated that the album’s title refers to how people on the ground look from an airplane. As one of the people way down here, I can’t help but be impressed at how high they’ve flown. But from where I am, they look pretty small, too. What they’ve achieved on Ants will always hang over me, but I can choose to look straight ahead and keep it out of sight if I find that to be more helpful to my own creative process. And who knows? With enough effort, I might be able to find that mythical balance of influence, and use it to reach even greater heights.