W.L: The Snuts fail to deliver on the fiery energy we were so desperately hoping for

Over the last couple of years, The Snuts have been this fiery Scottish indie band that you should most definitely keep your eye on. Alternative music in the UK is struggling. Since Arctic Monkeys hypnotised the world at the end of the 00’s and the beginning of the 2010’s we haven’t had anything massive since. 

Before the release of the album, I really thought The Snuts might be the ones to do this. I was wrong. The album does have belters on it but overall, I was disappointed. It is such an odd experience, for almost exactly half of the songs I felt ready to take on Tyson Fury but for the other half, I was waiting for the song to end. 

It is almost impressive how the band has managed to create some energetic, creative, and brilliant songs but then make some dull, wishy-washy tracks that I couldn’t give a shit about.

Unimaginative lyrics and a repetitive slowness left me at the end of the album just thinking about the amount of wasted potential. The songs I didn’t like aren’t terrible. But it’s just their style is so over-used in the album. For instance, ‘Top Deck’ is one of the slower songs, utilising their lead singers’ quirky voice to their advantage while having a well-composed guitar flowing throughout. It is nice but with lyrics mainly just speaking about some girl and that they use the same story for a good 5/6 songs, like ‘4 Baille Street’. I was fed up.

These slower songs are okay, in moderation and when sprinkled between the likes of ‘Always’ and ‘All Your Friends’ the album has the potential to be pretty bloody good. It is charismatic, energetic and so fun but it just gets drowned out by some really unnecessary songs. Some of these slower songs like ‘Maybe California’ are quirky but that is about it.

If the band utilised that special sound they have in songs like ‘Elephants’ and kept that going throughout the album I would have labelled this a ‘great’ album but it just doesn’t maintain any sort of narrative. It is as if the band can’t make their mind up on what kind of music they want to make. Slow bluesy rock or upbeat, fun indie.

This had the potential to be one of the best indie-rock albums of 2021 but The Snuts sacrificed this for some soppy love songs.