Photo by Rosie Foster.
Black Country, New Road treat their songs like working documents. By the time they released their February 2021 debut, For the first time, they'd played most of its songs live and shared preliminary recordings of them, tweaking and polishing as they went.
They've applied the same technique to "Snow Globes," the fourth single from For the first time 's follow-up, Ants From Up There, out February 4 on Ninja Tune. BCNR premiered the song's chorus during their Christmas 2020 livestream concert with black midi, and continued to flesh it out on tour in 2021.
Following their debut's format of long-form showstoppers, "Snow Globes" is an epic, nine-minute track that starts with three minutes of slow-building strings and woodwinds before Isaac Wood starts his first verse. It continues to crescendo slowly until, near the six-minute mark, Charlie Wayne lets loose a punishing barrage of drums as Wood repeats the song's refrain: "Oh god of weather, Henry knows / Snow globes don't shake on their own." The climax ends and the song fades out the way it came in, a slow and graceful finish to what what will be Ants' penultimate track.
Stream "Snow Globes," along with the album's three previously released singles, below.
