A deliberate change of direction, a new drummer, and a recording session at Green Door Studio in Glasgow with no digital intervention, no smoothing, no safety net, no studio-favoured perfection, just a band playing a track the way they’d play it live, which, in my opinion, is exactly how it should sound; raw, real, fuelled and alive. In an era where over-production can make a beloved song completely unrecognisable on a live stage, that’s no small thing. What you hear here is what you’ll get at the live gig, and I think that matters.

The energy is evident straight away and doesn’t let up. Punk runs through the bones of this track, with flashes of The Clash in the urgency, but the guitar work is pure Bloc Party and Maximo Park; frenetic, sharp, and purposeful. The bass is excellent throughout, and the drumming is exactly what great drumming should be; empathetic, contributing, there when it needs to be and restrained when it doesn’t, with enough rolls to keep the momentum going without ever trying to own the track. The vocal sits somewhere in the territory of Jonathan Higgs of Everything Everything, a tenor that reaches and holds its own over that wall of guitar, carving out an individual space rather than fighting for it.

Lyrically, ‘Fire With Fire’ is doing something that feels quietly necessary right now. Tongue in cheek without being flippant, it’s a track that isn’t shy about saying it how it is; “The way you twist every story”, “say what you want to say, don’t pay no mind“, “don’t lose your faith, there is no shame“. There’s a social observation running through the whole thing, a Franz Ferdinand-esque defiance of new norms, an open hand extended towards debate and differing opinions and the idea that it’s actually fine to disagree with someone. “I’m still too scared for what I’d find”, layers an honest admission buried in the middle of all that bravado, and is all the more effective and human for it.

The mid-break is certainly a moment. Stripped back to a delicious bass and low-key vocals, a genuine breath before the mosh storm. And when the storm comes back? It kicks you in the guts with a sound that is fuller, heavier, more urgent, winding you in exactly the way great indie rock should.

The Cuts aren’t reinventing anything here, and they’re not trying to. What they’re doing is taking a recipe of genuinely great influences and making something that is entirely, confidently their own.

Welcome back to The Cuts. Don’t leave it so long next time.

‘Fire With Fire’ by The Cuts is out 28th August 2026, with an EP due out later this year.

26th August 2026