^{Picture: Edward Cooke}

It’s not easy being an indie rebel. Ahead of their second album, Burn The Empire, The Snuts contrived a full-scale moan at their record label Parlophone for not releasing the album early, a fracas they’re embroiling themselves in so fans can hear it in full before their tour. Paraded across their socials is #releasetherecord, as though it were a placard against an authoritarian regime. 

This ersatz rebellion reeks of a band desperate for something to kick against, a strange move since the real controversy of this record may stem from its title alone; the rallying call of opening track ‘Burn The Empire’ a few weeks after the Queen’s death sounds more punk than the band could ever have intended. From that promising start, the album seems like it’ll play from the Sam Fender gamebook of hiding despair inside buoyant indie bangers, particularly when frontman Jack Cochrane launches into a confrontational chorus of ‘burn the empire and bring a souvenir’.

State-of-the-nation lyricism continues on ‘Zuckerpunch’, a spikey bop-along which breathlessly decries sweatshops, Amazon, clickbait news articles and the deleterious effects of a society in thrall to phones. It’s a messy collage of modern talking points throwing out easy jabs at the political landscape, the kind of 11pm ramble you’d bark at your mates in the pub for a collective agree-‘em-up. But it’s also a welcome sentiment in a rock landscape that rarely displays its socially responsible cojones. 

^{The Snuts' latest album cover: a severe case of burn the empire, fire the photographer}

And, well, that’s it for the protest lyrics, the remaining eight songs concerning themselves with vague character studies and merciless stretches of nonsensical rambling. Frontload your album with rabble-rousing sentiments and its later vaguer lyrics will sound toothless by comparison; the inconsequential cooing of ‘Pigeons In New York’ or ‘Hallelujah Moment’ fade into little more than a pleasant background hum. 

Sonically, the track list barrels between the punchier end of TRNSMT-friendly rock to acoustic numbers with the earwormish insistence of Jake Bugg. The clearest point of comparison is Kasabian, but without the delirious imagination of Serge Pizzorno to send any song skyward. ‘Cosmic Encounters’ gets closest to that level of songwriting strangeness, juggling 90s trip-hop beats with a lurching guitar-strummed chorus and synthesised vocals as Cochrane confidently claims that ‘cosmic electronica’s taking on a new generation’ (whatever that means).

Burn The Empire may be wildly inconsistent, but it’s also crammed with invention. A song like ‘The Rodeo’, with its punchy ‘la-la-la-olay!’ chorus, has the good-natured chug of a great Budweiser ad, while the acoustic balladry of ‘Yesterday’ illustrates Cochrane’s range beyond the lad-rock spectrum as he strains his vocal cords towards a falsetto. 

Enough ideas are thrown at the wall to lend the album a ‘god loves a trier’ charm, even though most tracks fail to stick the landing. The Snuts’ anti-authority pose may be irritatingly paper thin, but Burn The Empire shows the promise of solid craftsmen. 

Burn The Empire is out now on Parlophone Records.