It’s always a good day when Tyler Childers releases a new record. Since Purgatory, I haven’t enjoyed every song on each release, this one included. But that’s ok. There are plenty that I have also loved! I’m just glad Tyler is still making music, even if somewhere deep down I’m still hoping one day he will do bluegrass again.
For now though, this record is probably the furthest from bluegrass Tyler has gotten. It has a sort of greasy, chicken-fried southern rock feel to it, with moments of psychedelia. For the most part, everything is distorted, not quite as extreme as say Sturgill’s Sound & Fury, but pretty muddy and overdriven. Honestly, I wish the mix was a bit clearer and cleaner. I like the sound they were going for, but unfortunately it buries Tyler’s glorious voice a bit. At times there is a fair amount of filtering and distortion on the vocals as well, which makes it even harder to hear what I feel is some of the best lyrical songwriting since Country Squire.
I think the songwriting is the strongest aspect of Snipe Hunter. Pretty much every song is fairly catchy, for the most part not quite as wordy as a lot of the songs on Country Squire, and in general some lyrics stuck with me more than anything off of Rustin’ in the Rain. There’s a couple interesting themes running through the album, and in classic Childers fashion, the main one is hunting and hunting dogs.1 But, there’s also those moments of reflection, humor, and love that makes Childers’s songwriting so unique and wonderful. So, without further ado, let’s go track by track!
Eatin’ Big Time
Off to a fiery start! A strong beat with some modulated guitars immediately grabs your attention, and then Tyler’s voice comes in at full unfiltered intensity. At one point there is some really cool distorted organ ala Deep Purple; it’s a high octane way to start the album and certainly sets the tone. I think this song is about finally truly making it – “Eatin’ Big Time” – and trying to make sense of both the extremely high and low times that come with it. Hunting seems to be some kind of metaphor for hustling through the music industry, and getting the kill is making it. At this point he has made it, and is trying to make sense of growing up a poor kid from Appalachia and now earning more money than he could ever know what to do with:
Keep my time on my Weiss
Ya goddamn right, I’m flexin’
‘Cause a thousand-dollar watch is fine enough flex for me
Have you ever got to hold and blow a thousand fucking dollars?
It runs for forty hours and then it winds itself to sleep
I think the point here is he has millions of dollars, but even just $1000 feels ridiculous to spend on a watch (which in the world of high end watches is nothing, just ask John Mayer). It feels good, but then maybe it also feels weird because he grew up around so much poverty. And at the end of the song, he’s exhausted from the hunt, from the hustle, and returns home to mama and her care, where she makes him a big plate – a different kind of “Eatin’ Big Time”, the kind I think he wants the most.
Cuttin’ Teeth
I’m honestly not going to talk about this one much because the voice is so filtered it doesn’t even sound like Childers. It’s also just kind of slow and boring. I think a very strange choice for the second track, especially after such a hot and heavy start.
Oneida
This is more like it. To me, this sounds like classic Childers. Starts off with just the man and his guitar, and slowly builds in instrumentation. The chord progression and vocal melodies are reminiscent of some of his other older songs, though I can’t quite put my finger on it (“All Your’n” maybe?). It’s a beautiful love song to add to the roster of beautiful love songs Tyler has penned and holds its own alongside “In Your Love” and “All Your’n”. Definitely one of my favorite tracks off Snipe Hunter.
Getting to the Bottom
This song is another highlight for me. Has kind of a classic country feel, again with the Waylon-esque phaser (that kind of slow syrupy motion) on the guitar, and the big spacious reverb on the pedal steel. Like a lot of songs on this album, I wish Tyler’s voice was a little more present in the mix. There is some excellent writing as well in this song, for example:
The pheromones of this city secrete a sand quick set
To call for it from the recesses of my mind, the fear of death
The thrill my heart my thump so hard it breaks a joist or worse
Getting to the bottom of an angst hard-fought to learn
Really beautiful wordplay and impressive rhyming. Unfortunately, also like a lot of songs on this album, it has this weird 20 second instrumental break with what sounds like a harpsichord (a medeival predecessor to the piano)? I think its timbre is pretty jarring and out of place sounding, and the playing itself also doesn’t really fit the rest of the song. There are a number of songs on this album that I really like except for one or two weird instrumental breaks. I think it’s cool that Tyler is trying new things in the studio, but maybe some of it just isn’t clicking with me.
Bitin’ List
I just have to make an observation – this is like the fifth track on the record and the third one with something about mouths in the title. Not sure what that’s about. I kind of love this song, though. It’s tongue-in-cheek, catchy, and lighthearted in the spirit of “Ever Lovin’ Hand,” “Bus Route,” and “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?”. One of my favorite things about Childers is his consistent ability to write good songs that are also a little goofy. The only thing I didn’t love about this song was the outro, which has a lot of yelling and dog barking, which just felt unnecessary. Otherwise, really enjoyed this one.
Nose on the Grindstone
This was a surprise to see on the track-list, but I guess it makes sense since it’s never been released on an album before and he still performs it live. That said, it does feel a little out of place to me on this record, although of course I love this song and think it’s still some of Tyler’s best songwriting to date. I also felt the mix was a little weird again, especially in headphones, it sounded very flat, like there was no sense of space with the guitar or the vocals. They also added some kind of fuzzed out guitar and organ to the second half of the song as it builds in intensity, which is cool, but I vastly prefer the version with just him and the guitar from the OurVinyl Sessions EP.
Watch Out
And just like that, we are back to upbeat hunting songs, or to be more specific, foraging songs. This one is a catchy tune about exploring in the woods, learning how to forage for “black cohosh” (an herbal plant used by Native Americans) and oyster mushrooms while avoiding the “copperheads everywhere” and bears. I like this one a lot, it reminds me of being in the woods back home in Georgia. The vocal melodies and songwriting in the verses really have Childers’s distinct voice, while the chorus is really just a catchy hook, but it works. I even thought the breakdown with the guitar solo and the sort of synthy-sounding background vocals was really cool. I think this song is one of the best examples on the album where the experiments with new production techniques really worked.
Down Under
Not my favorite. The lyrics are kind of funny and there are some pretty clever rhymes in what seems to be some kind of ode to Australia and its “critters.” I find the beat a little annoying and repetitive and really don’t like the bell sounds that come in at different times, just makes me feel like I’m listening to a Christmas song. The slide guitar work in the outro is pretty cool, though.
Poachers
This song has more weird vocal filtering like on “Cuttin’ Teeth” that honestly makes it not even sound like Tyler singing. It is entertaining, though, and again uses the hunting theme to talk about something broader. He tells a story from the perspective of a guy worried about his expired license and thinking about what would happen if he got in trouble for poaching. The man worries a lot about what everyone else will think of him; I think the whole thing is basically a metaphor for Tyler’s controversial “political” songs and the backlash he received:
I can hear ’em now talkin’, ah, God, it is scandalous
His Papaw’d be rollin’, I don’t know where he strayed
I know that you’d know him, he’s the one on the rad’ya
He’s the one with the vid’ya of the coal minin’ gaysI can hear ’em now talkin’, ah, God, it is scandalous
He could have been somethin’ if he weren’t such a mess
If he hadn’t went broke, God cancel him sideways
We lost us another to the others, I guess
“Him” is obviously Tyler, the “vid’ya of the coal minin’ gays” is the music video for “In Your Love,” which featured two gay coal miners falling in love. It was beautiful, and a huge moment for the queer community in country music, and it lost Tyler a lot of bigoted fans: “God cancel him sideways / We lost another to the others, I guess.”
He’s faced ire from the right (especially the Christian right) for other songs like “Long Violent History” that he recently performed live for the first time during the L.A. ICE protests at the Hollywood Bowl, while projecting the words to the famous poem “First They Came.” It was a strong and honestly brave act of musical protest that once again lost him a number of MAGA fans. Good riddance, I say, but I think this song is about him wrestling with the fact that some fans, and I imagine some people back home, have written him off since he became vocal about the issues he believes in. That some people see him as some kind of “poacher” or bad guy when in reality he’s just going about his life.
Another example is his incredible support of indigenous communities, and the fact that he stopped performing “Feathered Indians” because he felt that if Native Americans themselves weren’t sure how to feel about the word Indian, which is what he learned in all his charity work, that he shouldn’t be using it, which I think is a very reasonable attitude. Given it’s his most famous song, though, I imagine these remarks will alienate even more fans. They can have Jason Aldean and Morgan Wallen.
Snipe Hunt
The title track gets off to a…weird start. Almost 20 seconds of random yelling and drum stick tapping before the band comes in. Again, as has become a theme at this point, there are some really great lines in this song but the vocals and every other instrument is so distorted it’s nearly impossible to make out the words. The distorted organ is featured again, which I love, and the instrumentation is actually pretty cool, I just wish the vocals were clearer. The outro is a great organ jam that gets more weird and distorted as it goes on. I have a feeling this will be an incredible song live, even if the studio version is a bit lacking.
Tirtha Yatra
This song, once more, has weird filtering on his voice. Why? Why keep doing this? At this point it’s frustrating, I want to hear Tyler’s actual, wonderful voice. The songwriting is great, though, a classic sounding country song about Hinduism and Childers’s own spiritual journey over the years. The long lines bouncing along with the beat remind me a lot of the songwriting on Country Squire. My only other gripe, is, once again, a weird instrumental break with an out of place instrument. This time some kind of string sound, maybe a Mellotron?2 I just think it sticks out in a weird way.
Tomcat and a Dandy
This song, though you might not guess from the name, starts out with a chant of the “Hare Krishna” a Sanskrit mantra associated with some Hindu sects. Obviously building off the Indian spiritual theme of the previous song, it’s arranged in a very interesting way – a canon, where a chorus of people split into sections sing overlapping parts. In some ways it sounds almost like a Christian hymn, especially with the layered fiddles. It’s a really cool combination of Appalachia and Hindu spirituality. Honestly, I’m not sure what the lyrics are about, but I think it’s some kind of reflection on his life. This song is incredbily unique and stands out from the rest of the album with its fusion of different world music and religious influences.
Dirty Ought Trill
The album closer! Right off the bat, that overdriven electric piano tone in the intro is incredible. Sounds almost like an electric guitar. The vocals are super catchy, and the beat slowly grows and gets more kind of poppy, for lack of a better descriptor. The song itself is about “Dirty Ought Trill” – the same “Trill” I would think that is featured in “Poachers.” The name feels like a play on the popular hunting rifle referred to as “Thirty Ought Six,” which is some cool wordplay to close an album with consistent hunting themes. It’s grungy, fast, makes you nod your head, and sums up the record well.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I like this album. Do I think it comes close to Purgatory? No, but I think this is an excellent addition to his widening discography. Clearly, he is interested in experimenting with production, and basically every record he has released has amped up the production to another level. Bottles & Bibles was mostly just him and his guitar, then Purgatory with a sparse bluegrass feel, Country Squire with a full honky tonk band, and then of course the grand experiment in production that was the three variations of Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven. Snipe Hunter takes us into a new, unexplored realm of southern garage rock that Tyler hasn’t really explored before, at least off the stage. That is very exciting! And I think a lot of these songs, especially the ones I didn’t love because of the vocal filtering, will be incredible live. They let his voice shine through (as they should) live and I bet some of the stranger production quirks will be replaced with licks from the band. I can’t wait to catch them on tour this year.
Snipe Hunter is fun and fresh and different. I have a feeling a lot of these songs will really grow on me, kind of what has happened with most of his stuff for me since Purgatory. This is probably because I will always love bluegrass Tyler the most, but I’ll be happy with whatever he puts out because he truly is one of the best musicians of all time, his band is locked the fuck in, and he’s Eatin’ Big Time.
- Hunting seems to be having a moment in the alt-country world, check out the Turnpike Troubadour’s new album, The Price of Admission. Not my favorite of their’s, but some good tunes. The lead single was sort of an obscure hunting song, and there is a few others. ↩︎
- A Mellotron is a vintage keyboard that used tape to play back samples of different instruments, one setting it had was for orchestral strings and had a very distinct sound. Maybe its most famous use was for the strings on “Kashmir.” ↩︎
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