Hard Times Furious Dancing
Since the early 2010s, the shadowy British collective Snapped Ankles has been raging against 21st-century malaise with harsh electronics and urgent beats. Clad in ghillie suits—outfits designed to resemble moss-covered foliage and other curios of nature—that seem more suited for hiding in a post-apocalyptic landscape than the present day, they create cracked anthems that feel like dispatches from a ruined future. Their fifth album’s title, which is borrowed from a 2010 collection of American author Alice Walker’s poetry, sums up how Snapped Ankles defy what they view as a complacent world. *Hard Times Furious Dancing* is not just their latest manifesto, though; it’s a noisy, up-front invitation to join the group’s pseudonymous members on the dance floor as they bellow big, society-shaping questions like “How we gonna pay the rent?” and “What happened to humanity?” Snapped Ankles combine the fitful rhythms of post-punk with a battery of synths that flutter and strobe, offering a glaring reflection for the confusion and unease outlined in the group’s sloganlike lyrics. At times, they echo their forebears from the ’70s and ’80s, updating the musical tracts of then with added noise and maximized vexation that’s appropriate to the present day. “Personal Responsibilities” tilts a crooked finger toward “very large corporations” amid a clamor that recalls British art-rock legends The Fall, while the grinding arpeggiated synths of the tech-skeptic call “Smart World” bring to mind Tubeway Army’s existentially bothered 1979 single “Are \'Friends\' Electric?” “Hard times require furious dancing,” Walker wrote in the preface to her poetry collection 15 years ago. “Each of us is the proof.” Snapped Ankles bear out that declaration with music that is furious in both intent and execution, fueled by wrath and ready to command an audience to seethe and spit alongside them.