The Smith Street Band know how you feel. After all, a battered, bruised sense of understanding has been the key to their sound since their inception, defining each and every one of their shrieking, sympathetic records. Lead singer Wil Wagner writes songs about the inner life that somehow feel of you, not simply for you, and the band’s approach to punk has long involved turning thematic fodder that others might read as tragic or melancholic into bubbling, anthemic belters.

You scream along to a Smith Street Band song to stop yourself from crying, and the group’s energy has a transformative power all of its own. That certainly explains all the Smithies tattoos out there; all the lyrics scrawled across bedroom walls and printed onto bodies. Wagner’s words matter to people not because of their majesty, or because of any complex linguistic mastery. No: the songs make an impression because fans feel like they could have written the words themselves; because every line feels personal to a thousand different people.

In many ways then, More Scared Of You Than You Are Of Me is a typical Smith Street Band record. Wagner’s distinctive howl, a curious mix of death metal gurgle and the kind of messy scale-climbing abandon you’d expect from a drunken karaoke diva, is again one of the band’s defining forces, the glue holding the myriad parts of the record together. His vocal performance on the tongue-in-cheek ‘Death To The Lads’ is a standout, his voice winking across the chorus – but to be honest it all works, from the snarls of ‘Young Once’ to the clipped delivery of ‘Run Into The World’.

The lyrics, as ever, are trained on the kind of everyday anxieties and atrocities we largely dismiss as part and parcel of regular life: having to spend time with assholes; wondering whether or not the milk crate you’re perched on is coated in piss; and spilling your guts “for money”.  The stories are brief, more ungainly snatches than overworked narratives, but their pared down style has a beauty all of its own, as the glimpses of a difficult life gracefully lived gradually build up to something truly impressive.

YouTube VideoPlay

Indeed, that’s the ultimate drive behind More Scared, and the record can be read as a peek at the inglorious, undignified sadness of regular existence. It’s a bristling collection of misunderstandings too mundane to normally make a big deal about; the kind of unspeakable horrors you encounter when you’re a bit drunk at a show, or stumbling up to the shops while feeling generally shit about yourself. “Reality is uncomfortable,” Wagner sings on ’25’.

So Hamlet this ain’t, and nor is it meant to be: rather than some grand, otherworldly climax, the record builds up to a point of quiet, largely internalised rebellion. ‘Young Once’, the penultimate track, is the sound of someone definitively making up their mind, and though Wagner lays bare his mistakes, he ultimately proves unbowed.

Which again is standard Smith Street Band stuff; the group have long imbued the passive with its own power, seeking subversion in intimate rather than physical, boorish ways. But despite all the senses in which More Scared is familiar, it is no regression. For every Smith Street Band hallmark, there is a surprise to offset, from the warbling instrumentation lurking behind Wagner’s cry on ‘It Kills Me To Have To Be Alive’ to the surprisingly poppy, earwormy chorus hidden in ‘Shine’ like a razorblade slipped into a bobbing apple.

Not to mention that in many ways, More Scared might be the most polished record the group have yet turned in. That’s not to say it’s clean or lifeless; rather it’s considered, buffed to the very inch of its life. Not a line or a hook is wasted, and despite the fact the running time brushes up close to the 40-minute mark, nothing about the record feels overlong or unnecessary. Every song is contingent; every song matters.

By the time it’s all done, one is left with a striking sense of accomplishment; filled with gratitude not just for the band, but for oneself. That is, after all, Smith Street Band’s great success – they make victories seem shared. More Scared is not a home run for the band that wrote and recorded it, but a roaring celebration for every single fan that has helped them along their way. It is, ultimately and unsentimentally, a testament to the love between musicians and audience, and a stunning achievement in its own right.

4 1/2 out of 5

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine