Following the release of Millenials, TARAN WILL takes us through The Snuts’ discography, and tells us why it’s so hard to make modern political music.
“Written with the sole intention of putting a smile on your face” is how West Lothian band The Snuts describe the intent behind their third album Millennials, released this February. On the surface, it seems this couldn’t be further from the direction of their previous album, the politically charged Burn The Empire, released in 2022. Can the decolonial ramifications of their sophomore album be considered truly sincere when followed by the largely uplifting, apolitical tracks on Millennials?
Committed politically charged music is by nature intertwined with marginality, particularly in the Western world. It is rare for highly politicised songs, let alone bands, to breach into mainstream popularity, often remaining confined to their own audiences. Particular audiences can form echo chambers based on region, class, political leanings, religion or gender, and hence, whilst evolving or expanding, can never find truly broad appeal. The Snuts choosing to follow their chart-topping 2021 debut W.L. with a project named Burn The Empire was bold. The title of the album, which taps into a deeply entrenched history of suffering, subjugation and violence, seemed charged with decolonial intent, positioning itself towards anti-imperialist freedom. The band’s silent retreat from politically conscious art on their subsequent LP Millennials, however, embodies much of the complexities, challenges, and limitations of writing modern politically conscious music.
Within the broad sphere of indie music, The Snuts certainly have leaned more into pop influences in making Millennials, as opposed to the more rock and punk aesthetics present on Burn The Empire. While pop universality triumphs over its antithesis, politicised marginality, both albums are much more nuanced than this simple binary. Millennials, with vocalist Jack Cochrane’s catchy vocal chops backed by jangly guitar riffs, is in many ways perfectly suited for summertime, festival crowds, and the good times. “Gloria” and “Dreams,” both singles released in the lead-up to the album’s release, play on themes of love and joy. With a Blur-esque focus on mundane British life (“When I met you at the Tesco… love twinkled in the aisle”), the band stand on the shoulders of giants of the British music scene. “Butterside down” and “Novastar” continue this message of uplifting positivity. Still, a darker thread runs through the album, most prominent in “Deep Diving” where Cochrane delves into substance abuse as a form of escapism. “NPC” also explores the shadowy facets of social media and the need to escape from bleak everyday life. By incorporating these darker undertones, the album remains relatable, humanising Cochrane and co. through the cynical humour of lines such as “life’s a bitch, flip the switch, I just check out.” However potent, Cochrane’s social commentary on Millennials lacks references to the wider structural, societal issues so readily placed front and centre in their previous release. The darkness of millennial life is met with a wry smile.
Burn The Empire starts and ends with fiery outpourings of anger. The first and titular track opens to the voice of former labour MP Tony Benn, warning on the dangers of repressive undemocratic methods. The tone is unapologetically aggressive, with bassist Callum Wilson providing a thumping heartbeat to accompany Cochrane’s outcries, declaring “I won’t take a back seat, no fucking way man”. A self-proclaimed protest song, “Burn the Empire” acts as a sonic call to arms. On their accompanying album documentary, Cochrane described the track as “terrifying to make” but a necessary part of a wider movement of young people finding their voice to speak out. In his words, “fuck keeping your opinions and politics to yourself, I think we’ve forgotten we can make real change”. The album’s final song “Blah Blah Blah” takes aim at “cardboard politicians dangling from puppet strings”, that lie and sew division. Cochrane’s piercing vocals emblazon a pulsing, hypnotic beat by drummer Jordan Mackay. This is The Snuts at their political peak, unrelentingly abrasive. In Jack Cochrane’s words: “my god, did we scream that track.”
The nine tracks bridging “Burn the Empire” and “Blah Blah Blah” navigate a range of themes and sonic landscapes beyond exclusively punk-inspired political protest. More uplifting is the promotion of unity in “Pigeons in New York”, odes to love in “Knuckles” and “End of the Road”, and the synth-heavy “Cosmic Electronica” which avoids political messaging altogether. Cochrane’s vulnerable songwriting provides a common thread throughout the band’s discography, even where aesthetic identities appear dissonant. This vulnerability appears at its darkest in “13,” where Cochrane tells the tragic tale of “another young boy from the motherland” spiralling into circles of drug abuse and ultimately being imprisoned for murder. The willingness to view the grey imperfections of the world, as well as those within ourselves, shapes both albums into artistic entities that transgress the simple binary of political and apolitical.
While both albums are clearly nuanced in their explorations of various overlapping and opposing themes, their marketed aesthetics remain in conflict. How did the band transition from a musical identity wrapped in gritty decolonial intention to the colourful, more carefree guise of Millennials? This undeniable thematic dissonance across projects may be explained by the vastly differing creative processes and environments between the band’s three albums. 2021’s W.L. consisted of ten previously released singles alongside three new tracks, a culmination of self-produced and live material described by the band as their lifetime work. By contrast, Burn The Empire was written and recorded in eight weeks, with the band working closely with producers Clarence Coffee Jr. and Nathaniel “Detonate” Ledwige. Changing again, Millennials was written and recorded in two parts: the first half produced by friend of the band Scott Anderson in a barebones studio in the Scottish Highlands, without a specific project or plan in mind at all, then the second half whilst touring the US, Japan, and Australia. Such contrasting artistic processes inevitably affect the overall direction of their music, and the aims behind their art also. Perhaps it shouldn’t be expected for an album forged under the dichotomy between the rural isolation of Fort William and the high-tempo, dislocated lifestyle of international touring to be thematically consistent, or even similar to, an album created in a much more traditional, compact, and focused manner.
Significantly, Millennials is the band’s first album since leaving major label Parlophone. The main reason cited for leaving the label was disillusionment with the pressures and direction of the modern music industry, and particularly forced self-marketing on TikTok. As Charli XCX, Raye, Halsey and other artists have similarly protested, major labels have fixated on pursuing TikTok virality to an alarming degree. For The Snuts, the idea to form their own label came from similar pressures, culminating with being told by an executive that “the music doesn’t matter.” Perhaps surprisingly, given the aesthetic shift between albums, the band seemed to have had no qualms with the exclusively musical side of their relationship with Parlophone. In an interview with Musicweek in February, Cochrane lauded the A&R wing as ‘tremendous’, noting how creative control remained with the band, and they were encouraged and supported to take sonic risks and experiment with different genres. In the Burn The Empire documentary, Clarence Coffee discusses how he curated the space to take the band out of their comfort zone, finding new ways to reach where they wanted to be. In particular, he challenged Cochrane’s perfectionism over vocal performances, looking to convey emotion through imperfection. With the absence of these external figures in the production process of Millennials to actively push the band out of their comfort zone, maybe it’s no wonder that criticism of the album has centred around its relative safety, staying firmly in its own lane. Subverting traditional narratives, The Snuts’ most anti-establishment, politically charged music was created as signed artists. Their retreat from the ‘big corporate machine’ coincided with their retreat from political songwriting.
Under their own label, Happy Artist Records, the band aim to forge their place in a shifting music industry by championing artists’ mental health and labour rights. Away from the big corporate machine of the music industry, the focus can be exclusively on what the band wants to create and what the fans want to hear. Accordingly, in an interview with Rolling Stone UK this February, Cochrane described Millennials as the most important album for them as a band. Through it, they were able to operate with freedom and carelessness, with no extrinsic noise or commercial pressures, and in their eyes repair the bond with the listeners of their music. While the breaking point may have been social media self-marketing pursuing virality, independence seems to have granted the band members newfound confidence in themselves and their music. Political consciousness to the tune of decolonial messaging may have been a necessary casualty of a band looking to continue evolving, forging a new identity further from their previous body of work as signed artists.
Perhaps the potential drawbacks of political songwriting were deemed too high-risk. The reprisal of D:Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better” as a bedraggled Rishi Sunak announced the latest general election illustrates the power of song to evoke the feeling and political connotations of a particular moment in time – but also the potential risks of such associations. The past was linked to the present through a shared desire for change, using the song as a medium to draw parallels between Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign and Keir Starmer’s recent electoral success. D:Ream itself regretted their association with Blair’s New Labour in the wake of the Iraq war, and refused Starmer permission to use the song if he attempted to do so. Evidently “the political song” can gain agency of its own, forming new meaning and character in the public realm, to vast unseen consequences and complexities for all parties involved. Across the Atlantic, the list of major artists that have opposed Donald Trump’s use of their music across the last decade is staggeringly long. Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Luciano Pavarotti, Linkin Park, Sinéad O’Connor and many more have resisted, legally or otherwise, the appropriation of their music by the former President. Within this last week The White Stripes announced they were suing the Republican over the “flagrant misappropriation” of the seminal “Seven Nation Army”, writing on Instagram on Monday “this machine sues fascists.” Creating a politically charged album, or even band, remains fraught with these issues to an even greater magnitude. For a band embarking on their first independent record and looking to repair their relationship with music-making, steering clear of further political songwriting can therefore be seen almost as a logical choice.
While ultimately the integrity of their previous decolonial messages may have been eroded, the question is of consequence, or perhaps lack thereof. While not quite as critically acclaimed as their first two releases, Millennials reached number 2 in the UK albums chart, one spot higher than Burn The Empire, and the band’s upwards trajectory looks set to continue. After a set at Glastonbury for the third successive year, alongside a slew of further festival appearances, The Snuts are set to tour Europe and the UK this winter. Titular track “Burn the Empire” remains on their setlist, but it seems unlikely that the band will reignite their flirtation with politically conscious music as independent artists. The band’s fanbase was not built on political consciousness; at their core is music, crowds, and the energy of youth. “After all we are just music fans at the very core of what we do” reminds Cochrane at the start of the Burn the Empire documentary. Bearing this in mind, it should come as little surprise that in August last year the band described Millennials as the “easiest record we’ve ever done” in an interview with NME. If Millennials is the body of work closest to the band’s fundamental sonic and thematic identity, political songwriting is likely behind them. Cochrane’s claim of “I think we’ve all forgotten we can make real change” now ironically inverts back upon a band suffering from decolonial amnesia, having forgotten that they too could make real change.
Featured Image courtesy of @The Snuts on X.
