The Snuts: “I don’t think major labels need bands anymore”
Despite their first album, W.L., topping the charts and scoring a top-five finish with 2022’s Burn The Empire, The Snuts quit the major label system last year. Fuelled by the desire to be their own boss, the Glaswegian four-piece have formed the independent Happy Artists Records, inspired by a complaint they heard from a label executive, who said there was nothing worse than a happy artist.
Their first release on the label is their new album, Millennials, out on February 23rd, after growing disenfranchised on Parlophone Records, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group. While they are still relatively fresh into their journey, having released their chart-topping debut less than three years ago, the Scottish four-piece have witnessed immense change in this short time, and now, they feel ready to go it alone.
The final straw in their relationship came when The Snuts took to social media to beg for the release of their second album to be pushed forward by a week in time for their tour. While to my cynical eye, this seemed like a marketing stunt, frontman Jack Cochrane explains over Zoom from his home in Glasgow that it was wholly genuine and signifies the “breakdown” of their relationship.
Without having to answer to any suits in boardrooms, The Snuts undertook a relaxed approach to their third album, which they first teased last May with ‘Gloria’. Cochrane reveals that “there was no intention of making a record”, but in a desperate bid for escapism due to “a lot of external things going on for us”, they decamped to a remote studio in the Highlands. Although it started as a bonding exercise, the trip sowed the necessary seeds for Millennials.
The island, where part of Millennials was recorded, doesn’t even boast a shop or a pub and was only accessible via ferry. With no distractions, that initial two-week spell in the studio proved fruitful. The band wrote the lead single ‘Gloria’, which confirmed they didn’t need to have flash facilities in London or Los Angeles, and like the early days, the quality of the songs was the only metric that mattered.
“Initially, we thought it would be pretty daunting,” Cochrane says of the process. “We were very used to being involved in the system, and having a producer that you pick from a black book of a record executive, and the pressures that come with making an album that way. This time around, it was all about seeing what we can do on our own.”
The Snuts worked with esteemed producers such as Inflo, Clarence Coffee Jr, and Rich Costey on their last two albums. However, on their third record, Cochrane handled production efforts alongside Scott Anderson, the brainchild behind their live shows. In contrast, Anderson isn’t an A-list producer like the other names mentioned — nevertheless, the connection and relationship he shares with the band more than compensated.
However, due to their hectic touring schedule, The Snuts didn’t have the luxury of time to complete Millennials off-the-grid in the Highlands. Once ‘Gloria’ was released, it was time to hit the road for a lengthy tour of the United States, where they supported Louis Tomlinson in iconic venues such as The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, then heading out to Australia and Japan before finally having the time to return to the studio.
While this could have previously proven to be a stumbling block, The Snuts, free from the restrictions of being tied to a major label, embraced their new DIY approach by recording while they were on the road.
Although Cochrane acknowledges that they’ve been “maybe spoiled in the past”, The Snuts were liberated by the realisation that they could turn their tour bus or hotel room into a recording studio.
“We ended up recording and writing this record in Japan, Australia, all different states in America, which is cool because the record is fast-paced,” he explained. “A lot of that is because of the way we were living, the relentlessness and the rambling man lifestyle of being on the road. A lot of that energy of bouncing from place to place found its way onto the record”.
With a running time of under half an hour, Millennials doesn’t overstay its welcome and provides ten snapshots. Like youth, the tale begins frantically but ends sombrely with ‘Deep Diving’ and ‘Circles’, the latter being Cochrane’s favourite track from the album. While the political themes that dominated Burn the Empire have disappeared, Cochrane wanted to adopt a “reflective” approach and explore simple ideas they’d previously ignored.
Cochrane elaborates, “Millennials is more like an idea for us; it’s the steps and important things that have happened in our lives that have brought up to this point. That can sometimes be quite hard to sum up, and at the moment, it feels like none of us really know where we’re at, so Millennials, for me, was a combination of the steps in the process that got us just as humans to this point.”
One person who has helped Cochrane get to where he is today is his father, who poignantly portrayed an older version of the frontman in the video for ‘Deep Diving‘. Initially, Cochrane planned to use make-up to age him “as old as possible”, but due to time constraints, he needed to call in a favour from his old man.
Reflecting on the emotional shoot, he revealed: “My dad suffers from MS, so the longer the day was going on, his body and his mind were being properly fatigued, so nothing had to be acted out. All those small moments that make that video were proper real, which I try to keep doing as much as possible throughout the album.”
Authenticity matters to The Snuts in every department and is the lifeblood of their identity. Therefore, when they took aim at commercialism through their last album, Burn the Empire, Cochrane felt uneasy about “shoving it down people’s throats” during a cost-of-living crisis.
With that in mind, on this album, The Snuts have chosen not to release cassettes despite having a loyal fanbase willing to buy them. While it would help game the charts, as many bands know all too well, Cochrane feels it would be exploitative and inevitably only lead to a “fucking chunk of plastic in the sea”.
The level of control The Snuts have regained over their career down to minute details such as releasing cassettes has envigorated the band. Taking charge of their destiny has lifted the grey cloud that once lingered with Cochrane declaring Millennials as the musical equivalent of “the sun coming up” after the dark turn they took on Burn The Empire. The frontman attributes this mood switch to their current “positive headspace”, whereas on their last record, they were “feeling frustrated and down”, which ultimately played out on the album.
Over the last decade, major labels have been working tirelessly to create the next Adele or Ed Sheeran, who they can pluck from obscurity and turn into a superstar. Not only are solo artists cheaper to look after in the early stages and easier to market, they also typically have a higher-commercial ceiling than bands, which explains why major labels have switched their focus.
Not only does Cochrane believe bands no longer need major labels to thrive, but going a step further, he believes the situation swings both ways: “I think in the same vein, I don’t think major labels need bands anymore,” he affirms.
“I don’t think the system necessarily works for bands, and I think you’ll see a lot more (bands going independent) in the coming years. That’s the whole point of us setting up the label: to try and create a space for young artists and bands to create in a way that’s actually healthy for them,” Cochrane adds.
In the run-up to releasing Millennials, The Snuts have been burning tarmac across the United Kingdom, playing for fans at record stores and living off food exclusively available in service stations. However, another chart-topping album would be nothing more than a bonus. Reaching this point, exclusively on their own terms, is a victory in itself for the Glaswegian band, who are defiantly proving the power of independence.
Millennials is set for release on February 23rd through Happy Artist Records via The Orchard.
