Description
Snper (the Project) began as a collaboration between local Nashville punk mainstay Connor Cummins and Blair Tramel, an early education teacher with a sideline in wickedly funny animation and art. As their cassette tapes and homemade videos began to find scattered fans around the world, the duo brought the Project to the live stage in late 2021 and Snper (the Band) was born.
Featuring one of the wildest live shows out there, as well a maelstrom of puppets, 8 bit animation, papier-mch, whistles, flashing lights and a whirling dervish of bodies, Snper commits the live act to a studio setting and sets the stage for one of the most promising punk debut albums in decades.
But dont take our word for it; heres Henry Rollins, at-length on the magic of Snper:
In the briefest of descriptions, Snper is a band who, in a 33 1/3 rpm world, make 45 rpm music they play at 78 and it completely works.
Even at this incredible speed, Snper (the kinetic duo of musician Connor Cummins and visual/video artist, Blair Tramel) is super precise instrumentally and skillfully melodic vocally, even though, again, theyre flooring it almost the entire time. The overall effect is a megadose of extremely cool and unique songs that while at the speed of tomorrow, would lose their overwhelming fun factor if played any differently.
As far as Snper vinyl, theres been three 7 records: 2020s Music For Spies, the Snper EP released in 2021 and last years Town Topic EP. All of them are great but youd be well advised not to sit down once youve put a side on, as youll be getting up to flip the record over all too soon. Snpers music isnt for sitting around to anyway.
Diverging from their regular two person line-up, for Super Snooper, Connor and Blair bought on drummer Cam Sarrett, bassist Happy Haugen and Ian Teeple on second guitar. The results do justice to the music and has evolved Snpers sound exponentially.
On the fourth listen to Super Snooper now and a new evaluation springs forth: Snper dont play fast. They play at the speed of Snper. The band is so tight, the songs so ready for the Bonneville Salt Lake Flats testing site, one might conclude Snpers just leapin and lopin, to borrow the title of Sonny Clarks excellent 1962 Blue Note LP.
Snpers completely happening 11-23-22 thirty-four song 27:22 set at Nashvilles Exit/In, mercifully recorded and released so you can back up your witness testimony as to how smokin the show was with actual audio verification is further proof of how totally ripping this band is and brings to mind a topic insinuated by the live recording but proven true by Super Snooper. Given the brief but awesome glimpses into Snpers music afforded by the aforementioned 7s, one might wonder if the group could hold the line for a full album. The answer is an enthusiastic yes. Super Snooper is great great great and you might find yourself playing it over and over as it gets better and better the more you do.
Speaking selfishly, I want Snper to hurry up and make another album. This is a really cool record.
– Henry Rollins
Our take: Weve carried a few tapes and 7s from Nashvilles Snooper, and while we liked them and they sold well, I never would have predicted the groups debut LP would arrive via Jack Whites Third Man Records. Ill leave it up to you to decide whether its a good fit, but I think this is a killer record that deserves a wider audience than just the subscribers to some fringe YouTube channel. While Snooper has pretty much all the trappings of the now-established egg punk sound, Super Snooper feels wider in scope than I might have expected. Take a track like Pod, whose foundation is built on similar jittery rhythms to most of Snoopers other songs, but the long, melodic lead guitar lines in the verses pull against the hyper-compressed rhythms in a way I find captivating. (I should also mention that said guitarist is Connor Cummins, whose axe-slinging also elevates the music of Sorry States own G.U.N.) While tracks like Bed Bugs and Powerball have a similar fun-loving charm to Judy & the Jerks, Super Snoopers highlight for me is Running, the 5-minute closing track that finds Snooper wrestling with a motorik groove to brilliant effect. I also appreciate the crisp and bright production, a contrast to the often super lo-fi egg punk aesthetic. I hear Snoopers live sets are incredible, and I hope to experience that at some point. For now, though, Super Snooper stands on its own as one of the more coherent and addictive full-lengths the egg punk world has birthed.
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