Snake Eyes is back with a new album encompassing some of their best lyrics and sound. The pop duo from Brighton released their new album, Cash Rich, on March 6th via Alcopop! Records. The album is their first and comes six years after the band's initial conception.
The band’s biggest work begins with “Jar Full of Wasps.” The opening sounds of feedback followed by Jim Heffy’s rapid guitar drop listeners straight into an intense yet fun sonic landscape. The track’s lyrics feel similar to the pop-punk bands of the early-2000s, with a progression that feels almost like 80s rock, making the song as a whole something easy to jump around to and easy to envision on a festival stage. “No Cars” is a darker track with blurred vocals as the duo seems to comment on the lack of action they see in the world around them: “Big money, big plans/ Small people, no choices/ There’s blood on their hands/ Small people, no voices.”
Almost every song on this album is its own two-minute power canon, launching nostalgic beats with unique and humorous seeds, like the perfect major chord sung in the middle of the album’s third track, “The Kicker.” “The Kicker” is another gritty commentary on trying to feel okay amid current personal and international events: “Where will your policies be/ When we’re living in a tree/ To keep homes above the sea.” “HDTV” adds a more prominent drumbeat (courtesy of drummer Thomas Lisle Coe-Brooker) to the band’s signature sound. With lines “I’ll break myself/ For another’s wealth/ I don’t feel myself/ Can i swap with someone else?” Heffy continues to comment on wealth and its inequalities, this time with the “tah, tah, tahs” at the end of the chorus to lighten the mood.
The first half of the album closes with “I’m a Daydream,” a lighter track, both sonically and lyrically. The song’s chorus “I’m a daydream of a past me” describes the feeling of being proud of how far the band has come, while the track’s verses “And i know, grass is always greener somewhere else/ And I always feel, that something betters happening somewhere else” express the constant formation of new dreams and new inadequacies. Equally complex and relatable, the track is a clear highlight of the album. “Slugs” acts as the album’s midpoint, and once again takes on a new speed, this time acoustics and perfectly in-sync harmonies. “Slugs” is somehow playful, ominous, and absurd, with whistled tunes and the lines “Through the garden/ In the kitchen/ They’re not welcome/ No permission” giving it a similar feeling to a Bookends era Simon & Garfunkel track.
The second half of the album begins with “Hug Me,” which brings back a characteristic messy pop-punk sound with the repetition of the track’s title phrase. The track is followed by “Soup”: an anthem of dissatisfaction. Heffy sings “What picks you up gets me down/ Think I caught the sad bug that’s going around” and “I say my soup has gone cold/ You say the bowl is half full,” providing some of the band’s most animated lines.
Track 9 takes the form of the album’s title track, “Cash Rich.” A one-minute monologue about money and greed, “Cash Rich” takes listeners completely by surprise. The opening line “Cash rich and morally bankrupt” unites the album’s themes and defines the project as a whole as something expressive and powerful, in all of its serious and sarcastic sounds. “Headache” juxtaposes the surprising onslaught of sound at the end of the previous track with a muffled vocal about an inescapable headache. The track shows off what the band does best: being almost animatedly literal.
“Swing Away” slows down into another dreamy tune with subtly introspective lines, in this case, images of flying and being held down like “build a jar around a firefly” and “I bet you can catch the sunset/ With just one hand, effortless.” The calm can’t last for long, however, and the track ends with another barrage of heavy guitar riffs. The album ends with “Robot Boy.” Simple and somber, the album’s ending track is by far its most impactful, casually displaying all of the band’s talents and leaving listeners with an unexpectedly emotional and brilliant ending.
“I guess I’m just a little robot boy/ Who don’t feel nothing at all/ Thought I was grown up but I’m still a boy/ Wish I was simple.”
Cash Rich is available to stream on all platforms now and is released in conjunction with a UK/EU tour kicking off this month and the announcement of a hefty festival circuit.
