Album Review: I Hate My Life, I Hate Myself, and Everyone Hates Me Except For My Dog by Snow Day (by Emma Prew)

Browsing the ‘folk punk’ tag on Bandcamp recently resulted in me discovering acoustic punk artist Snow Day. A self-proclaimed ‘mediocre singer-songwriter masquerading as a punk’, Meghan Burke describes I Hate My Life, I Hate Myself, and Everyone Hates Me Except For My Dog as being about going through a really rough time – ‘I was experiencing feelings of hopelessness and self hate and the only one who was there for me during that time was my terrier Delilah.’

The first of four songs on the EP is titled Lucky. Opening with some simple strummed chords, the vocals soon come in and begin to tell their impassioned tale. Lucky is about the all too real struggles that many young people experience today (in this case in America but it applies elsewhere too) – working hard to get a decent education and then struggling to get by with a minimum wage job at the end of it. The addition of violin for the chorus really lifts the song, particularly alongside Meghan‘s anger-fuelled lyrics. Caffeine is up next. Here Meghan sings more specifically about suffering from depression and anxiety, perhaps as a result of the life struggles mentioned in the previous song. However, the song is as much about trying to be better as it is about mental health problems. ‘Don't think that I'm pathetic, please don't think of me that way, I’m running out of things to lose, I'm just trying to find my way, My hands begin to shake, my head begins to sway, Maybe ’cause caffeine makes me sick, but I drink it anyway.’

The third song, Alone, feels very personal as Meghan sings of having serious trust issues as a result of a toxic relationship. There’s an understandable amount of venom to the vocals that, along with the brusque strums of the guitar, really make you feel the pain in the words that are being sung. Towards the end of the song, Meghan shouts ‘I wish I never met you’ which further which further emphasis the pain and anguish. Throughout the EP, but particularly on this song, I was greatly reminded of Days N Daze’s Whitney Flynn which is definitely no bad thing. The final song is called Going To Rutland. Starting out with some distinct muted guitar playing, this is a fairly slow-paced song – not that the others have been especially fast paced, mind you – which allows the listener to focus on every word. Going To Rutland is about revisiting somewhere that holds both good and bad memories and the mixed feelings that this results in. Although the anger is still there, it does feel like some sort of conclusion to the thoughts and feelings that were discussed on the previous tracks and ends the EP well.

I’m not sure how long Snow Day has been playing music – this appears to be their first release on Bandcamp – but I will be keeping an eye out for more from them in the future.

You can stream and download I Hate My Life, I Hate Myself, and Everyone Hates Me Except For My Dog on Bandcamp and like Snow Day on Facebook.

This review was written by Emma Prew.