THE SNUTS shimmer with starry-eyed nostalgia on their new album, ‘Millennials’. Check out the latest cover story for our New Music Friday playlist edit, The Cut.

Words: Ciaran Picker.

There’s an age-old debate in music: is success a blessing or a curse? Let’s use West Lothian’s The Snuts as a case study. After getting major label love in 2018, their 2021 debut album ‘W.L.’ went straight to Number 1 in the Official Albums Chart. They toured with Louis Tomlinson, The Kooks and Kings of Leon before the release of their second album, ‘Burn The Empire,’ flipped the script on the course that had been set out before them.

“I just couldn’t physically promo [‘Burn The Empire’] in a way that got us to Number 1,” Jack Cochrane admits. “It’s an album that’s ultimately about how we should be collapsing massive companies. We had to stick to our principles and practice what we preach.” Just like that, the death knell had been hammered into The Snuts’ relationship with Parlophone, resulting in the band declining to extend their contract with the label.

The quartet found themselves in the daunting position of being an independent band for the first time in four years. Where many would have cracked under pressure, though, The Snuts saw it as an opportunity to be the band they’d always wanted to be. “We were put in the ‘lad indie band’ bracket because we play guitar, but with bands that we just sound nothing like.”

‘Millennials’ is a further example of this, with the band shifting gear into a sunnier, indie-pop collection of “songs we forgot to write,” in Jack’s words. “We weren’t taking ourselves too seriously; we were just explaining and exploring what got us to this point. We dug into some older references, and it created these 90s and 00s sounds that were really cool, man.”

The boys consciously adapted their sonic aims, ensuring that they were able to keep the album feeling current without it being too superficial, being careful not to jump on a trend that dies out in a few months. “There’s a lot of stuff out there that’s just aesthetic, really, but we felt like this album didn’t belong to a phase or craze; we wanted it to last and to be honest, I think it will.”

This confidence in what they’re doing comes from their newfound ability to shape their own future and follow their own schedule. “I don’t want to slam major labels because they were great for us when we needed them,” Jack admits, “but there’s always so much noise around everything you make, it just adds pressure all the time. Like, if you have two weeks to record an album, you spend the first week getting to know the producer and explaining what you want to do. It’s nice to be able to take your time and just let things develop.”

The boys brought long-time friend and sound engineer Scott Anderson in to produce their newest venture, which brought with it both more energy and forced Jack into cutting the fat from his writing. “Scott’s just great, man, he let us fuck around and see what happened, but he was also really good at going, ‘What are you trying to say here?’ and just getting me to use fewer words.” 

Trying to get more direct writing onto ‘Millennials’ was a key aim and one that could only happen because of the total freedom the lads gave themselves during recording. “I’d always put, like, a poetic fire blanket over everything I’d done, but I wanted this to be less open to interpretation,” allowing the record to be both accessible and an immediate hit with listeners. 

Sustainability is central to the band’s new era, both musically and with regard to their new self-made label, Happy Artist. As the name suggests, the idea is to have the artists’ needs front and centre, placing the onus on being able to craft work rather than have a conveyor belt of constant releases. For Jack, this is the secret to allowing bands to have long and illustrious careers. “It’s just about making artists feel valued and comfortable, like do you want to take three years before you release this track? Fine. You want a year off to get your head right? Not a problem.” 

Jack feels this especially personally, having always hated the commercial side of creativity. “The best bit of all this is not having to be on social media 24/7, or play ten shows at a train station. We’re unplugged from the algorithm and can actually connect with the fans more as a result.” Their upcoming album release shows at Glasgow’s iconic Barrowlands underlines this point, with the boys giving tickets to everyone on their Discord channel who bought a copy of ‘Millennials’. 

Clearly, sinking back into their younger days has allowed them to reconnect with their truest selves, seeing them draw together strands from their back catalogue whilst also becoming more adept musicians. “We kinda relearnt how to play, or at least to play in a different way. There was always a feeling of luck on our previous records, but this being more of a collective process meant we really knew what we were doing and where we were going.”

The direction was massively dictated by opening track ‘Gloria’, a high-BPM indie anthem that beckoned in the jangling guitars and emotive vocal that ultimately became ‘Millennials’ sonic backdrop. “It was actually the first track we demoed. It’s usually so hard to enjoy your own music, but after that, we actively tried to write ten ‘Gloria’s,” Jack laughs. This infectious energy is sewn into the fabric of the record, with even their ‘Burn The Empire’ throwback ‘NPC’ being peppered with indie-pop adlibs and powerful basslines. 

Elsewhere, their noughties nostalgia combines with their ability to twist the mundane into magic, most obviously through their Wetherspoons name check in ‘Wunderkind’ or exploration of mental health in ‘Deep Diving’. The album artwork feeds into the beauty of the early-21st Century urban landscape that the boys emulate on the record, with a Gameboy, a Nokia 3310, and an iPod Classic all adorning the front cover. “The references helped to visualise the moments that felt like what it means to be millennials,” Jack explains. “Everything changes so much with every year, so it feels important for your soul that you keep looking back.”

To look into the future, though, ‘Millennials’ is an album full of pace and velocity, keeping the songs short and sharp – perfect, in fact, for a live show. This isn’t really a surprise, with most of the album being finished off on the road. After a few weeks in the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, the lads were back out with Louis Tomlinson in the USA, before embarking on a headline tour around Australia. “You just get so lost on the road, man,” Jack tiredly recalls, “but a lot of the franticness and intensity of tour bleeds into the music. People come to a show for the dopamine release, so these short, fast songs make sense.”

The next few months see another hectic live schedule for the Whitburn quartet, getting to play New York’s Bowery Ballroom, the House of Blues in Dallas, and a festival season that starts with a homecoming at Glasgow’s TRNSMT. “We just want to bring people together, like our OGs and new fans, without over-analysing everything.” The weight of expectation that can often snap a band’s resolve has emboldened the band into a real force of nature, with happiness at its heart. 

Out on their own, they’ve found a maturity and confidence borne of self-sufficiency and freedom that means they can keep evolving without fear of label backlash. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t in music. You do the same thing, and people get bored but do something different, and people don’t like it. We’re just gonna please ourselves, and, honestly, man, I think this record is pretty fucking cool.” It might not have been easy, but in exploring their past, The Snuts have cemented their future. And it’s a very bright one indeed. ■