by If you’re going to cover The Beatles, you are faced with a choice of attempting to match the musical skill of the world’s greatest band (à la Aretha Franklin) or completely reinvent the sounds laid down at Abbey Road Studios all those years ago (à la Devo). Thankfully, Nashville’s premier punk outfit, Snooper, chose the latter on their newly unleashed album of egg-punk mastery, Worldwide.
Although the band’s endearingly eggy rendering of ‘Come Together’ is only one of the many endlessly energetic shots of adrenaline included on the new album, Snooper’s ability to render a track originally lasting over four minutes into a fuzzy, sub-two-minute punk banger is quite a good reflection of their unique talents. From the very first moments of the Third Man-released album, the band wastes absolutely no time; there is no dawdling around, languishing in self-aggrandising guitar solos or expansive experimental offerings, just fast, loud, and honest rock and roll excellence.
In essence, that trimming of the fat is integral to the egg-punk explosion, which first introduced the world to Snooper back in 2020. Raw, energetic, and largely light-hearted garage rock taking its sensibilities from an unwaveringly DIY ethos and a diet of internet culture, the egg-punk scene has witnessed a plethora of cult bands come and go, but Snooper are a special case, and Worldwide certainly reflects that fact.
Namely, the band shows a clear appetite for artistic development. While other egg-punk stalwarts remain dedicated to five-minute self-released cassettes (and, let’s be clear, there is nothing wrong with that), Snooper have set their sights higher. With the power of Jack White’s Third Man behind them, along with the polished production of none other than John Congleton, Worldwide offers a perfect equilibrium between the rough-around-the-edges DIY punk of the band’s earlier material and a more polished, dynamic, and accessible sound.
For an album with 12 songs, the tracklisting flies by like a runaway train, largely because most tracks hang around the two-minute mark in length, but the album’s closer, ‘Subdivision’, is a prime example of Snooper’s sonic development, and it is no coincidence that it is one of the album’s ultimate stand-outs.
In an age of increasingly saturated post-punk moodiness and faux-indie commercialisation, bands like Snooper are utterly essential in taking rock and roll back to its roots. Worldwide is everything that a great rock album should be: chaotic, adrenaline-pumping, and infectious, but crucially, it isn’t pretending to be anything that it isn’t. For that, the Nashville group should be lauded among the most exciting rock and roll outfits out there at the moment.
Defining track: ‘Pom Pom’
For fans of: Getting drunk and rowdy at a local show in someone’s sweaty basement or an old disused factory held together by ratchet straps and hope.
A concluding comment from a classical music enjoyer: “I must have slipped while turning the dial, and all of a sudden my radio went from Classic FM to these ghastly sounds. Now I am covered in stick-and-poke tattoos and have sprouted a slutty moustache. 10/10.”
