SNAPPED ANKLES - Forest Of Your Problems

Post-punk contaminated by disorienting kraut-rock rhythmic flows, by gutted-out funk and psych-folk philosophies, the British band Snapped Ankles are one of the most full-blooded proposals to come out of the UK scene over the last decade, even if the band, despite a dazzling debut, hasn't enjoyed the same fortune as other post-punk revivalists.

Blame it on an eccentricity that isn't just aesthetically perceptible – onstage the four musicians wear shaman masks and took their name from the film “Misery” – but also one that's strictly musical.

Snapped Ankles' music is a contagious sonic sneer, throwing into the mix electronic effervescence à la Cabaret Voltaire, beat grooves à la B-52's, basslines à la Devo and verbal flashes à la Fall. What's certain is that the euphoric magic of their 2017 debut, “Come Play The Trees”, wasn't matched to the same degree by the more elaborate “Stunning Luxury” in 2019, which did however consolidate the band's theatrical streak, pushing further that surreal aura that makes them unusual, original and not easily pigeonholed.

Exciting yet wild, the English outfit's formula seems to find the right compromise on “Forest Of Your Problems”, also bolstered by an increasingly solid live showing, well represented by the concert album “21 Meters To Hebden Bridge”, released in 2020.

The band's shamanic, tribal nature finds the right synthesis and placement in exuberant yet increasingly refined grooves (“Forest Of Your Problems (Outro)”), while their liberating dance-band side is exalted by the driving punk/techno/glam rhythmic charge of “Rhythm Is Our Business”.

Snapped Ankles' difficult third album is another alien collection of rhythmic vibrations with an ancestral, futuristic charm, like the techno-ethno blend of the irresistible “Shifting Basslines Of The Cornucopians”, the electro-funk-kraut oddities that introduce new imaginary characters into the band's already rich virtual circus (“The Evidence”), or the scratchy electronic digressions that seem to emerge from the dark polyrhythmic and harmonic dissonances of Shriekback (“Xylophobia”).

“Forest Of Your Problems” is an album that suggests a hypothetical answer to the question that the few who've wondered about it have often asked themselves: what might Xtc have come up with if, instead of looking to the past (Beatles and Beach Boys), they had turned to the impulses of their contemporaries (Devo, Fall, Gary Numan, Stranglers) – a hypothesis borne out by the excellent techno-punk of “Undilated Lovers”, by the more introspective incipit of “Susurrations (In The Forest)”, or by the successful attempts at all-out chaos of “Psithurhythm”.

The English group's militant nature is always clearly and sharply defined – forest mythology and opposition to capitalism – and the music is equally obsessive and versatile, less immediately accessible and punchy than that of other contemporary post-punk defectors.

An album whose charm isn't instant but rather creeping and intriguing, Snapped Ankles' “Forest Of Your Problems” is a project that won't disappoint anyone looking for something more than a simple vintage set with post-punk connotations. A seemingly harmless record that you won't easily get out of your head.

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22/01/2022