Once again, it’s Album of the Year time! So SNACK is back, celebrating singles. Actually, in this age of atomised release schedules, concentrating on individual songs is making more and more sense (unless you want to chase those juicy AOTY clicks – hey, fair dos). Our main reason for existing is to support the grassroots and concentrating on singles allows us to celebrate artists at the very start of their creative journey. Also, we love singles – they’re great!
SNACK readers and writers have whittled over 200 songs released by artists with a connection to Scotland in 2024 down to just 20 of their favourites. Congratulations to Union of Knives and Aberdreamin on claiming top spot in the Writers’ and Readers’ votes, respectively. You can listen to the companion playlist which we’ve posted to our website here. I promise you, it’s a brilliant mix of tunes, full of quality and surprises. Scotland’s music future is looking bright. Enjoy!
UNION OF KNIVES – SALUT SALUT (SNACK Writer’s Choice)
When an artist comes back after eighteen years off, they need to make it count. Chris Gordon burst back through the wall with a sledgehammer of a song – a hedonistic rush of heavy compressed beats and Ant Thomaz’s jubilant toasts.
ALEX AMOR – DESIRE
Sweaty palms and a racing pulse, desire is a thing that turns you into a mess. Yet, listening to ‘Desire’ by Alex Amor it has never sounded so beautiful. Beautifully written, Amor delivers a track for anyone struck by cupid’s bow and arrow. It fizzes gently like the slip into your afternoon nap.
BOTTLE ROCKETS – WINTER BABY
The aptly titled ‘Winter Baby’ boldly embraces all things cold and melancholic. The opposite of a lullaby, this is what you listen to when you’re up late at night longing for childhood. With this perfect blend of distorted guitar and pulsing beat, this alt-indie band from Glasgow have created a track that swells and swells to a perfect crescendo.
BRENDA – PIGS
Short and sweet, ‘Pigs’ by emerging Glasgow trio Brenda is perfect to blast in your car while thinking about people who have done you so dirty there’s only one word to describe them. With lyrics that hit direct and unerring over a scratchy beat and perfectly plonky synth-line, in one word this single is: catharsis.
DOOM SCROLLER – COLD RIVER FLOW
Imagine a slow-mo Everything Everything track dipped in a sizable vat of gloopy doom-acid (the actual acid, not the genre) and you might be close. Snedds – sometimes of this parish – described it last winter as ‘booming, buzzing, garbled electronics with an oddly delivered pop vocal that shimmers, stumbles, and soars’. Like being haunted by your brocken spectre.
FRIGHT YEARS – STARS
‘Stars’, by Edinburgh’s Fright Years, buzzes from the start. Whisking you off your feet, the music battles for your adoration alongside the consistently strong vocals from Jules Kelly. There’s an infectious energy from this one, and it’s bound for repeat plays.
GUESTS – ARRANGEMENTS, AS IN MAKING THEM
Gloriously contradictory: deep insight expressed in halting inarticulacy, intimate yet giving nothing away, boundary-pushing with a three-day earworm of a melody. Jessica Higgins and Matthew Walkerdine took the spirit of art-punk experimentation and created something totally their own.
GURRY WURRY – HEART AGAINST THE WALL
The comforting embrace of psychedelic nostalgia, like a warm weighted blanket on a wet winter’s day and a hot cup of cocoa spiked with psilocybin. A welcome wave of the sun-dappled summers of half-remembered imagination.
JANE FRANCES – REBORN & GROWN
‘Reborn & Grown’ is the exquisite third single from Jane Frances’ debut album. Reminiscent of early Joni Mitchell in its pristine, wintry stillness, the track is graced with the Edinburgh singer’s crystalclear soprano and warmed by 70s-tinged guitar chiming softly throughout.
JILL LOREAN – PEACE CULT
‘Would you like to be a renegade with me?’ ask Glasgow trio Jill Lorean on their new album’s invigorating title track. Despite ragged harmonica and a chugging garage-rock riff, there’s vulnerability in the anxious lyrics and spindly guitar solo.
KILGOUR – FEEL THE WEIGHT
A specific kind of person will fall fervently in love with Kilgour’s folk melodics, early-nineties college radio guitar scuzz, and oblique misspelled literary references, and if you are that kind of person then we’re probably going to get along.
MAJESTY PALM – BORDERLINE
Pulsing and sparsely lush, ‘Borderline’ takes its own time in illustrating just why if you want someone or something you should probably just come out and say it. Meeting half way is all about balancing guts and restraint and sonically this song lives its message.
MEGAN BLACK – FUNK FOR INTROVERTS
Paying homage to introverts, this track proves that just because you like staying home, doesn’t mean you can’t get down. It combines Megan Black’s 70s rock influence, hip-hop, soul, pop, and funk to show what happens when you give Megan trite advice – she does what she wants, and she can do it all.
MILANGE – SING!
An atmospheric and eerie post-rock trip into the bizarre, ‘SING!’ by Glasgow four-piece Milange is a simmering doom-hit from beginning to end. Soaring vocals deliver lyrics that are vividly uneasy; like a deer in the headlights all you can do is listen and accept your fate.
OUTBLINKER – TECHNO VIKING
An intense slab of live electro built on nearly a decade of touring, this is a masterclass in maximalism – adding additional layers well past the point of rationality and pulling the rest of us along in the wake of their techno longboat.
QUEEN OF HARPS – WHERE WILL YOU FIND ME
Timeless drum and bass with a laconic and soulful vocal, expertly delivered harp samples and a thick droning bassline – it’s perfect. Spooky, sparse and addictive. If you’re into this kind of thing – and we definitely are – it will haunt your thoughts regularly for just one more listen.
RACECAR – FALL LEAVE
racecar? More like ace-car. Childhood friends Izzy Flower, Robin Brill, and Calum Mason have had quite the year, with countless fantastic singles. That being said, ‘Fall Leave’ is by far our collective favourite. Grandiose and bombastic, the song is an orchestral pop/punk rhapsody that sounds the way speeding on an empty highway feels. Attention-grabbing and triumphant, the Scottish alt-pop trio have done it again.
SAPLING – RABBIT HOLE
Exiled Doonhamer, Sapling, has collaborated with various great and good types but her debut single ‘Rabbit Hole’ channels the spirit and layered synths of Trevor Horn while boasting a chorus catchier than leprosy. Intelligent pop doesn’t get any poppier or intelligent than this.
ZOE GRAHAM – EVILIN
All the best songs are named after women. ‘Roxanne’, ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Gloria’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and now ‘Evilin’, by Zoe Graham. Graham brings to life the relentless and unempathetic Evilin – she sounds like a right card – as guitars curdle alongside plush synths and tautly machined drums. While you might describe Evilin as the kind of woman who ‘isn’t good for you’, this track most certainly is. Bold and ambitious alt-pop delivered with rare wit and clarity.
ABERDREAMIN/ MOODY MOODY – FEELS LIKE THIS (ABERDREAMIN REMIX) (SNACK Reader’s Choice)
A tune that’ll leave you itching to go ‘out out’ or maybe just ready to spend the rest of the evening dancing around your living room with the headphones on. This dreamy slice of 90s gently burbling euphoric-acid kicks off like Leftfield’s ‘Open Up’ and features 80s reverbed vocals that will bounce about your head for hours after.
Words by Chris Queen, Carlin Braun, Andy Reilly, Zoë White, Stephen McColgan and Kenny Lavelle
