Considering the essential role that drum machines play in egg punk, it’s a bit of a shock that Snooper—arguably the genre’s biggest band right now—never used one until the end of last year. While swinging from one tour route to another, all while punching in at their day jobs, the Nashville five-piece suddenly found the beating heart of egg punk sitting in their lap. Singer Blair Tramel and guitarist Connor Cummins started writing songs synced to the hardline rhythms of a vintage Zoom MRT-3, drawn to the propulsive nature of an intentionally repetitive structure. Worldwide, the culmination of those brainstorm sessions, is expectedly jacked up and alert. It’s the beefy older brother to 2023’s slinky art-kid debut Super Snõõper, but Snooper’s unwieldy creativity bends its rigidity into moments of zany malleability.
As if powered by a metronome plugged into a high-voltage outlet, Snooper hit the ground running on Worldwide and never stop across its 28-minute runtime, turning into varsity sprinters with a cross-country runner’s endurance. From the descending, jittery melody in opener “Opt Out” to the gloomy ’80s bass casting a British new-wave shadow over “Worldwide,” each member of Snooper—Tramel, Cummins, guitarist Conner Sullivan, bassist Happy Haugen, and drummer Brad Barteau—vaults through a series of musical high-knees and shuttle lines. If their aerobic endorphins weren’t already infectious, Snooper kick it up a notch with electronics on “Star 69” and “Pom Pom.” “They made me the team captain/And told me, ‘Make it happen,’” Tramel chants during the latter. Her teammates fortify the pep rally: pulling guitar strings across the fretboard, splicing drum beats into lightening-fried stutters, layering dog barks like cymbal hits.
Snooper thrive when locking eyes with the listener and tapping their wristwatch. On “Company Call” and “On Line,” they add gloss to both re-recorded versions from last year’s split 7″ with Prison Affair, letting Haugen and Barteau steer with a thundering bassline and the accoutrements of a full drum kit determined to render the drum machine obsolete. There’s no Pro Tools trickery speeding up the tempo without altering the pitch; Snooper really are playing that fast, and they’ve got the bloody fingers to prove it. The album’s best sprint is an unlikely cover of the Beatles’ “Come Together.” Snooper smash their pointer finger on the fast forward button of a CD player, zipping through the Abbey Road single in highlight reel-style. The all-timer bassline waggles in Haugen’s hands like that old rubber pencil trick, the guitars wait on the sidelines for the riff-ready chorus, and sparse drums more than halve the original’s runtime. It’d be a perplexing cover if not for how well the imagery aligns with the papier-mâché puppets of Snooper’s concerts: juju eyeballs, holy roller getup, hair down to his knee (singular).
