London post-punk outfit Black Country, New Road have released a sci-fi inspired music video for their song “Concorde”, which will be featured on their upcoming album Ants From Up There. The record will be released on February 4th through Ninja Tune. You can watch the video at the link below.
The music video presents a comedic yet poignant narrative, following an ant-like humanoid alien (literally an ant from up there) who crash lands on earth and finds himself at the mercy of a group of not so understanding humans.
Maxim Kelly, who directed the music video, said to NME: “On the surface, the concept was straightforward, a walking video: An Ant from ‘up there’, sings Concorde…But, for a band who namecheck everyone from Scott Walker to Kanye West, and the pronounced mix of genres in their music, it felt right to take an analogous approach with the visuals. Throw as many references together as possible and see if we, too, could get it all to hold together as a piece.”
Describing the video further, Kelly stated: “We took the 6 minute [plus] runtime as an asset. It gave us the time needed to weave as much as possible into the film. A walking video in parts, but also with a narrative running through. We combined miniatures with VFX, and flanked the film with archival footage.”
The song itself feels sonically like a sombre progressive rock tune in places, given its structure and inclusion of various different instruments outside of typical rock band instrumentation, such as a piano and saxophone. It is somewhat of a departure from their debut For The First Time, however some of the meandering clean tone guitar lines do harken back to the post-rock vein that much of that album inhabited. The song is almost folksy at times as well, incorporating a mandolin that plays a gentle motif as frontman Isaac Wood sings “I was made to love you, can’t you tell?”.
Speaking to NME in an interview back in September, the band called their new album: “sad, epic and possibly more universally likeable… possibly.” The album is available for pre-order here, and all of the currently released singles can be found on all available streaming services.
Black Country, New Road will be embarking on a UK tour in April, and will be playing at show at The Roundhouse in London in February. Tickets can be purchased here, and the dates can be viewed down below.
08/02/2022- Roundhouse- London
06/04- The Foundry- Sheffield
07/04- O2 Academy- Oxford
09/04- Liquid Room- Edinburgh
10/04- The Empire- Belfast
11/04- Olympia- Dublin
13/04- Albert Hall- Manchester
14/04- Rock City- Nottingham
16/04- Concorde 2- Brighton
17/04- O2 Academy- Bristol
