Snarls finds beauty in its scars with ‘In Heaven There’s Rainbows’

When the members of Snarls met with Joe Camerlengo ahead of the Columbus sessions for their new EP, In Heaven There’s Rainbows (Take This to Heart), the recording engineer posed a question to the musicians that they said they had never before been asked.

“He just really asked us what our intention for the release was in general,” said singer/guitarist Chlo White, who joined bandmates Riley Hall (bass, vocals) and Mick Martinez (guitar, vocals) for a phone interview ahead of Snarls’ EP release show at Ace of Cups on Tuesday, June 23, alongside Future Teens. “He was like, ‘Is this just something where you’re making noise because you’re cool and you really want to make noise? Or is this something you want to give to the whole world, and we need to broaden it? Or is it just grip it and rip it?’ And he just made us think a little bit deeper about what the whole purpose of the release was, too, and not just the music and how it sounded.”

Coming into the recording, the musicians said they knew they wanted to capture “a sexy rock band” vibe, as they described it, while also branching out to incorporate new tones and textures that could provide some sonic distance from their crisper, more pop-oriented past catalog. “We wanted to embrace those grittier feels that Joe is familiar with,” said Martinez, “but we also wanted it to sound like Snarls and be radio friendly at the same time.”

Opener “Chemical Control (Spill Your Blood)” sets the tone, with White’s vocoder-treated, underwater vocals giving way to a gleaming chorus illuminated in gliding, neon guitars. Other songs are similarly hook-laden, including “One Wish,” a track that acknowledges the challenges inherent to modern existence – “The world keeps on crashing/As you’re getting older,” serves as a blunt-but-accurate summation of the last six or so years – but counters this awareness with an infectious earworm of a chorus best suited to a windows-down summer drive on the open highway.

While the music maintains a freshly waxed gleam, at turns, Snarls’ words tend to be more fractured, documenting the ways people are able to reshape themselves into something new and beautiful after having fallen to pieces, like shards of mirrored glass made into a glittering disco ball. Witness “One Wish,” where White sings of “healing my fragments,” or the album-closing “What’s Inside of Me,” a comparatively reflective turn that finds the singer lingering on the scars left behind. Then there’s the Hall-penned “Eternal Flame,” which posits that the anxieties and cravings that can go hand-in-hand with new sobriety are preferable to falling prey to complacency, these temporary discomforts creating a pathway for the best version of yourself to surface.

“It’s definitely the most real, raw song I’ve ever written, and it’s really interesting to hear it all laid out before me,” Hall said. “It’s a part of me being left behind, but in a good way, like it’s being shed.”

White said “What’s Inside of Me” emerged from a similar stretch of introspection, written last fall as she confronted the parts of herself that she felt “most uncomfortable knowing,” as she explained it. “We all have our flaws, and everybody has their fatal flaws that they’re sort of afraid to face,” she said. “And that song, especially, is within the context of relationships and … letting someone know you again after having your heart broken by this second party. … It’s about allowing yourself to let that curtain down again, and to let someone see you and still love you through your trauma, through your bad habits, through whatever it is.”

Collectively, the members of Snarls have come to view the concept central to In Heaven There’s Rainbows – that people are a collection of fractures, failures, and misgivings that only serve to make them stronger and more beautiful – as reflective of the band’s evolution over the past couple years. “We were going through a lot. And we got a new drummer – shout out Mike [Taddeo],” Martinez said. “And while the core of Snarls was never broken, we were fragmented, in a way. Writing these songs was definitely us getting our priorities straight, putting the pieces back together, and becoming a full unit again.”

Taddeo’s arrival proved perfectly timed, the drummer joining the fold at a point when the founding members were beginning to experiment with a harder-hitting sound. “We were extremely ready to embrace Mike’s playing,” Martinez said. “He comes from a background of making heavier music, and we were really excited and inspired by that while writing the new songs.”

And yet, the core vision the musicians have for the band remains essentially unaltered from their teenaged days. “Throughout the years, we’ve repeatedly touched base, like, ‘Hey, we’re still good, right? We’re all still feeling it? We all still have the same goal?’” Martinez said. “From the beginning, it’s always been like, we’re besties, we want to write music together, we want to be fulfilled by writing music, and we want to travel as much as we can playing that music. That was the goal from the start, and it’s still the goal today.”