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The Snuts at Brixton Academy

The Snuts at Brixton Academy | Live review

1^st May 2022

Peter Chow

1 May 2022

If the availability of illegal merchandise somewhat reflects a band’s status, then The Snuts have truly arrived, as hawkers were selling pirate tees at the corner of Brixton Road and Stockwell Road on Saturday evening, taking advantage of the Scottish indie rock group’s largest headline concert to date in London. It’s been a long way for that little school band from West Lothian to come to play their own show at this shrine, where they supported The Kooks just two months ago. Punters who turned up early were rewarded with seeing two decent opening acts of huge contrast, the highly grunge-influenced Lauren Hibberd and primarily acoustic set of Jamie Webster.

At 9pm sharp, the four old friends since secondary school (Jack Cochrane, Joe McGillvray, Callum Wilson and Jordan Mackay) took to the stage and immediately set the tune of the night with an ass-kicking Burn the Empire, followed by an undeniably Arctic Monkeys-inspired All Your Friends. As Jack rightly pointed out later on in the show, what the audience can expect to get at a Snuts concert is “tune after tune after tune”, and nearly every one of their songs has the potential to be a single. The same can be said of the few new numbers debuted on this tour, namely, That’s All It Is, Knuckles and Idols, all sounding great enough to suggest the band’s follow-up album to their triumphant debut WL will be just as excellent. Not to mention the humorous Zuckerpunch, which debuted on YouTube two months ago, and was accompanied by flashing images on the video screen when played live. It’s ironic to imagine how many in the audience were using their smartphones to film the song that contains the lyrics: “So walk with me down memory lane / When the phone in your pocket only had a few games.”

To say the stage at Brixton Academy seems a little too big for The Snuts might sound inappropriate in terms of the band’s popularity – but this is physically the case, for they have chosen an overall low-key presence instead of jumping all over the place. McGillvray essentially stayed at the same spot, while Wilson only moved over to communicate with Mackay on a few occasions. Cochrane, wearing a pair of sunglasses throughout the show, projects a rather cool image as the frontman. It was actually the first special guest of the night who made full use of the wide space, as Bemz joined the band on Elephants and rap danced across the stage towards its edge. The second guest Rachel Chinouriri later appeared for the live debut of End of the Road, shortly before the encore, which finished with Glasgow and left the audience screaming for more.

As one of the most hardworking bands at the moment, The Snuts will be back on an even bigger London stage in just another two months to support Kings of Leon at the O2 Arena, which is bound to take the boys to a higher level they well deserve and are fully prepared for.