Album Review: Forest of Your Problems by Snapped Ankles

From the primeval forests of East London step the ghillie-suited heroes of Snapped Ankles. Once again they speak for the trees, but also have other items of grave import on their mind. Namely our impending environmental doom and that the rich (or here labeled Cornucopians) keep getting richer. Though their "of the forest" mythology and semi-anonymous countenances may be growing as thin as a birch bark canoe, the group's dance floor rhythms and ever-escalating sense of urgency keep things ably afloat on Forest of Your Problems.

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As we move hastily towards ecological elimination, Snapped Ankles, those arcane men of the forest now decamped to generic new build cubes in Hackney – having, in shame, swapped berries and roughage for the familiar delights of avocado toast and sand blasted terrazzo flooring – have peered inward and identified four atypical human responses to the destruction of our once verdant green spaces, and made an album pitched for the resultant dialogue that sprouts between the disparate reactions. Their noticeably energetic interpolation of the sacred and the utopian, with more than a smidge of Prestwich motorik, hasn't altered all that perceptibly, and subsequently, whilst the group’s message remains calcified in its tongue in cheek sincerity, the album appears tonally tempered and falls spatially flat. Compositionally, by placing a semi-restrictive template upon themselves, the once profound collision of folkloric exotica and crackling post-punk ambiguities to be found on their iconic first two releases here becomes a shortcoming rather than the defining aspect of this, their third full length.

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