Snarls – With Love, | Album Review
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Take This to Heart Records
In 2007, archaeologists in Italy unearthed a special find from an ancient tomb. Two skeletons who were buried face to face, arms wrapped around one another, locked in an embrace for literal millennia. These are the Lovers of Valdaro, a 6,000-year-old couple whose love was preserved for eternity. On a sliding scale of romance, their visage is on the pretty extreme end, but devotion is an extreme feeling. Just think of the word we use when we feel that way about another person: a crush. Personally, I’d never interrogated the meaning of that word until I was about halfway through Snarls’ blistering and lovestruck sophomore effort, With Love, and felt myself getting short of breath. The culprit was the chorus of “Moon Tides,” a mid-album highlight in which front-person Chlo White compares herself to waves, churning and crashing under the unwitting influence of a celestial body:
And I see you standing there
And I’ve never felt more in love
And I’m spiraling into
The whitest light for you
It’s a fitting analogy that hits hard in part due to these words and the desperation of White’s delivery but also because she’s battling against a tornado of crunchy guitars and reverb that destroys any comfort to be found in the verses’ harmonies. The driving bass and guitar build until they threaten to crush the singer under their weight, making that particular schoolyard turn of phrase seem more appropriately literal than ever. On With Love, the warm and fuzzy feelings that come with a crush are thrown into sharp relief with Snarls’ most heavy and hard-hitting songs as the band explores just how painful love can get.
Consisting of White, bassist Riley Hall, and guitarist Mick Martinez, Snarls are no strangers to heartbreak, whether it’s the overtly romantic kind or the disappointments they’ve endured as a band. Their debut album, Burst, dropped during the first wave of lockdown in 2020, cutting what could have been a breakthrough moment brutally short. Instead of wallowing in that misfortune, the Columbus trio regrouped and got in the studio with producer/indie rock super weapon Chris Walla to record 2021’s What About Flowers? EP, redefining their sound in the process. As such, the band’s second full-length album comes almost as a re-introduction. While Burst never strayed too far from pillowy shoegaze-infused pop, the scuzzy bass line that kicks off LP2’s anthemic title track should instantly let anyone know that Snarls are still here and they’re playing for keeps.
Throughout With Love, Walla helps Snarls expand their arsenal to include more drive and pure power than ever before while still allowing room for some sweeter moments like the welcome acoustic breather “Driving Faster” that comes after a relentless first half. The album’s two lead singles, “Big Fish” and “Heavy Drinker,” show off this expanded range. The former won me over immediately with tides of fuzz rising and falling around the propulsive chorus and brooding verses, but the lyrics eventually betray the insecurities that plague the love story at the album’s center. Sure, there’s an inherent dorkiness to phrases like “I’m always a winner, and I eat my chicken dinner” or “It’s my lone wolf mentality,” but that awkward charm adds so much character to the narrator of the album. On the other hand, I’m still unsure if the twee “Oh yeah!” refrains all over “Heavy Drinker” stick the landing for me, but by the time the bridge comes around and White is lamenting about how she knows she’s not “her type of girl,” it’s hard not to root for her. This push and pull between adoration and inadequacy lies at the heart of these songs, with the band twisting their noisy pop rock to plumb the depths of feeling that come with love.
With Love, is at its most impactful when that emotional dynamic is portrayed in the music as borderline claustrophobic. “Baby Bangs” sees the song's narrator obsessing over their appearance, acknowledging the vanity in it while still surrendering to the fear they won’t be good enough for their partner. It all comes to a head as thundering guitars come crashing down on the steady rhythm section while White gets lost in a storm of self-doubt, repeating:
Wish I wasn’t so narcissistic
Wish that I was easier to deal with
Wish I could love you without needing
Some type of therapeutic assistance
This commitment to a crush can lead to some of these songs running together in the second half of the record. The grungy hook on “Star Power,” in particular, plays like a more downtrodden take on the more fiery one from “Wishing Bones,” which wouldn’t necessarily be a negative if the two weren’t placed one after the other in the tracklist, leading to the latter completely overshadowing the former. That being said, even this grievance reinforces how inescapable love can feel. No matter where a thought starts, it all circles back to one person in your mind. That tunnel vision taps into the paralyzing pain of knowing (or at least thinking) that there’s nothing you can do to win over your crush: who you are isn’t attractive to them, at least not in that way, trapping you in an endless cycle of yearning.
Unrequited love and rocky relationships are hardly fresh wells of inspiration in music, but Snarls consistently maintain a balance that brings out a teenage melodrama with a queer twist that sets With Love, apart from many other indie rock records. It’s an appeal that feels somewhere between recent phenomena like Olivia Rodrigo and boygenius but without people being annoying about them online. Although that could change - artists with the ability to capture how apocalyptic young love can feel tend to spark that level of fervor among people currently in the throes of it, and they often don’t stay small!
If Snarls have proven anything in their brief history, it’s that they aren’t ones to be kept down. Instead of drowning in self-pity, they either make the most of the hands they’re dealt or pivot to a new perspective. The last two tracks on the album could serve as an encapsulation of that hard-won optimism. “Sugar Rush” dots its lumbering groove and jagged guitar riffs with gorgeous vocal harmonies that accentuate the sweetness of the song’s titular metaphor. White lets herself revel in the temporary and even unhealthy nature of this relationship, reasoning, “Let this liquid courage ignite me now / Nothing lasts forever, so why not try it out?” Even if this thing can’t last, why not at least enjoy how good it feels in the moment?
That reckless abandon gives way to a healthier conclusion in the closer “Star Crossed / Lovers of Valdaro,” where White focuses on the more tender moments of this relationship, like listening to a song that reminds them of this person or how they comforted them during a spell of second-guessing. The last line of the album is “I like who I am when I’m with you,” and while this may sound like a familiar sentiment, it hits home as a sort of personal silver lining in the context of the record. Whether or not a partnership works out in the long run, it’s still worthwhile if you enjoyed most of your time with that person and grew because of them.
All of this brings me back to the titular Lovers of Valdaro: a couple that died young, estimated to be not much older than 20, and as such, they probably never got to find out just how strong their bond was. Still, a snapshot of their love story has now been viewed by millions of strangers in a world that barely resembles the one they left. People regularly live to be four times their age, and the vast majority don’t stay with the person they were with at 20. That’s exactly what makes their eternal embrace and the endless canon of star-crossed lovers in reality and fiction so beautiful. With Love, is Snarls’ attempt to etch something fleeting into stone. Or maybe it’s simply good old-fashioned catharsis. Either way, it’s another example for people to turn to when they need to understand or just feel what it means to be in love.
Wes Cochran lives in Portland, OR where he works, writes, and enjoys keeping up with music of all kinds, with a particular fondness for indie rock. You can find him @ohcompassion on Twitter, via his email electricalmess@gmail.com, or at any Wilco show in the Pacific Northwest.
