The Snuts review – homecoming rockers inspire flying pints and overturned chairs
From the second the Snuts step on stage, the crowd is a coiled spring. It was always a big ask: could these hometown heroes, just months after they become the first Scottish band to debut an album at No 1 in 14 years, really keep everyone still in their socially distanced seats for this, their very first Scottish gig post-lockdown? The four-piece’s surging, nostalgic alt-rock anthems are born to be held aloft by rowdy fans, and these particular fans have spent the past few months frustrated, watching on as the band performed shows south of the border.
At first, peace seems possible. The Edinburgh international festival’s brand new “purpose-built outdoor venue” looks and feels like a wedding marquee on steroids: a lofty white tent, seating laid out in prim rows, a wooden floor that feels sprung for slow-dances, even drinks delivered to your chair by tray-carrying staff. Fair to say this is not the Snuts’ natural environs: the Whitburn band’s steady rise to the top of the charts is thanks to six-odd years of frenetic, sweaty basement gigs.
As the lights go down and cheers go up, everything feels tentative. Cautious fist-pumping to opener All Your Friends – a swaggering, raw-edged song that puts a faux-nostalgic spin on the drug epidemic – turns into stamping feet, thumping the wooden flooring in time with Callum Wilson’s rich bassline on Always, a soaring, painful love song. By Elephants, a braggadocious test of vocalist Jack Cochrane’s charisma with straightforwardly silly lines like “I’ve got my rhymes bigger than all your elephants,” a few punters make a failed bid to sneak to the front of the tent. You get the sense that the band are really trying to keep the brakes on: “Look at you all sat nicely in your seats!” coos Cochrane. “When we come back next time, it’ll be amazing!” he bargains.
The Snuts’ debut album W.L. is a testimony to patience. It tracks the 10 years of songwriting since Cochrane, Wilson, drummer Jordan Mackay and guitarist Joe McGillveray first met at school, capturing suburban frustrations and early dreams of big city lights. The band have described W.L. – which stands for Whitburn Loopy, slang for a local youth gang – as their “life’s work” and dedicate it to council housing and “the dreamers who fight their way out”.
They wear their influences proudly, inspired by the strut of Britpop, the beach bangers of Fatboy Slim and the troubadour storytelling of indie rock in its noughties heyday. A willingness to swing from sound to sound sets them apart from their contemporaries: tonight’s show takes in sugar-sweet ballad Somebody Loves You, a collaboration with the Scottish Refugee Council; a moving acoustic moment embellished by cellist Heather Lynn; and a cover of N-Trance’s 90s classic Set You Free. A grateful, rapturous crowd amends chants usually reserved for Scottish indie rock royalty the View and Biffy Clyro – “The Snuts are on fire”, “’Mon the Snuts!” – and set the band pogoing in response.
But the floodgates open when Cochrane announces the final tune. Chairs are overturned as the tent’s population surges to the front of the stage, piling in like the last year never happened. Sing for Your Supper, the album’s closing anthem, is barely audible as the crowd strain their throats to yell along. Pints are flying and a lad is on his mate’s shoulders, getting pelted by empty cups. One woman has, somehow, found a plastic festival poncho. The Snuts excel at visceral, full-body nostalgia but this show – against the odds – is a taste of the future.