With mere weeks to go to the new album Ants From Up There, Black Country, New Road have revealed a fourth and final single, and it’s the live favourite “Snow Globes”. Drummer Charlie Wayne gives us an interesting and detailed insight into its creation:
“Snow Globes was one of the songs which had existed before we wrote the majority of the songs on AFUT. Though it’s a pretty good representation of the musical world we wanted to explore on the album at large. Rather than writing a song with a number of distinct sections we wanted to see what we could do with one continuous riff. It was a real exploration in trying to create something maximalist whilst limiting ourselves with minimal musical choices.
“Because the melodic instruments are all playing the riff in unison, Snow Globes left the drums with an interesting opportunity. The drums don’t sit separately from the rest of the band on Snow Globes, but we wanted to use them in a way that we hadn’t in the past. The initial idea was to feel like the drums were recorded for a completely separate track. They were meant to be totally arrhythmic and just sort of bubble below the surface – like at the end of White Ferrari. As the song progressed the drums still occupy a slightly different sound world, but because the rest of the band is playing in such a syncopated style, the drums were given a space to disregard rhythm and be completely expressive.”
That’s probably already a lot more than you need to know about the 10-minute epic that is “Snow Globes”. All we’ll say is that the instrumental decisions work incredibly well, and bring plenty of heft to Isaac Wood’s emotive words, which are, as ever, cryptic. Nonetheless, you’ll have the pained refrain of “snow globes don’t shake on their own” stuck in your head for hours after.
Listen to “Snow Globes” below or on streaming platforms.
Ants From Up There is out through Ninja Tune on February 4 – check out the various pre-order options HERE.
You can find Black Country, New Road on Bandcamp, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
