Happy 2nd Birthday to what is, without a doubt in my mind, the greatest album ever made.
I found this band back in 2019 when their second ever single, sunglasses, popped into my youtube recommended. It had maybe a few thousand views at the time. That song was revolutionary for me, unlike anything i’d ever heard. I resolved to follow the band like a zealot from there on out. I read every interview, listened to every live bootleg, etc.
Their first record finally came and went in early 2021 with reasonable acclaim. I adored it and spoke about it with fervor upon release. I sent it to anyone and everyone. But there was a small nagging part of me that thought the band had not reached terminal velocity just yet.
I remember being slightly disappointed that a newer live staple “Basketball Shoes” (a 13 minute monster of a song) was noticeably missing from the track list. When I first heard a live recording of it in 2019, I already knew that it was quite possibly the best song ever written. (I looped this recording so many times that every aspect is committed to memory, even the distinct crowd noises.)
AFUT released 2 years ago today, and it was a revelation. A 10 track, hour long, jam packed record of nonstop hits. Anthemic and yet equally frenetic, Ants is nearly impossible to describe. I have to imagine hearing this album is what hearing Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea for the first time must have felt like. Somehow both alien and feeling as though it has always existed, it is impossible to imagine a world, or a time, where this record does not exist.
It is a generational record that words will simply never do justice. Thank you BCNR, Thank you Isaac Wood.
concorde will fly.
