The Snuts built their freest album in a £70 Airbnb

Jack Cochrane unpacks the two-week DIY sessions, the live-ready choruses and a Brixton Academy date as Joy In Short Moments lands on 23 October.

The Snuts made their fourth studio album in a £70-a-day Airbnb in the Scottish countryside, working for two weeks with a DIY setup, mattresses for soundproofing and none of the external deadlines or corporate studio pressures that once framed their records. Joy In Short Moments is due on 23 October 2026.

Frontman Jack Cochrane has described the title as a mantra for appreciating the small things — a roof, food on the table — that came into focus once the band stepped out of the constant cycle of recording and touring. He has tied that shift to the group becoming fathers and husbands, and to a deliberate decision to write without the usual industry machinery around them.

Choruses built for fields and bigger rooms

The songs lean on infectious choruses and guitar parts designed to carry in fields and larger venues. Cochrane has named bands such as Coldplay and Oasis as touchstones the group had previously kept at arm’s length; this time those influences sit openly in the writing. One track was written in the wake of a historic Scotland World Cup win, keeping the record tied to the moments the band were living through rather than to a schedule imposed from outside.

That approach fits a four-piece who have always treated the stage as home ground. Jack Cochrane, guitarist Joe McGillveray, bassist Callum Wilson and drummer Jordan Mackay grew up together in West Lothian and took their name from schoolmates who watched them struggle to keep time. From the 2016 demos Glasgow, Proper and Sing For Your Supper through the 2017 The Matador EP and the 2018 singles Seasons and Manhattan Project, they built a following at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut and on BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 1 and Absolute Radio. Maybe California and Juan Belmonte in 2019 preceded a sold-out UK headline run, festival sets at Reading & Leeds, Benicàssim and TRNSMT, and a support slot with Lewis Capaldi. The 2024 album Millennials, further singles including Millionaires (Acoustic), and the 2026 track Summer Rain brought them to this fourth full-length.

What arrives with the record

The single PTS, written the morning after Scotland beat Denmark, already pointed toward the album; the full set now puts that energy into a wider frame. Cochrane has become an ambassador for the suicide-prevention charity CALM and hosts a podcast whose guests have included Louis Tomlinson — work that sits alongside, rather than apart from, the band’s own releases.

Autumn touring takes in a show at Brixton Academy, with November dates already set from Dundee through to Newcastle. The countryside sessions were short, cheap and free of outside clocks; what they produced is a record shaped for the rooms still ahead. Joy In Short Moments lands on 23 October, less than three weeks from now, with the gigs to follow.

Tour dates

NOVEMBER 2026

19 – Dundee, LiveHouse
20 – Aberdeen, Beach Ballroom
21 – Edinburgh, Edinburgh Corn Exchange
23 – Dunfermline, Alhambra Theatre
24 – Newcastle Upon Tyne, O2 City Hall Newcastle
26 – Sheffield, Octagon
27 – Nottingham, Rock City
29 – Norwich, The Nick Rayns LCR, UEA
30 – Hull, Hull City Hall

DECEMBER 2026

1 – Bristol, The Prospect Building
3 – Leeds, O2 Academy
4 – Manchester, O2 Victoria Warehouse
8 – Birmingham, O2 Academy
9 – Portsmouth, Portsmouth Guildhall
10 – London, O2 Academy Brixton

Plus 3 more dates.