Like a deep-sea creature built to withstand crushing depths, Snooper seem to thrive under pressure. How else do you explain their five-year leap from a no-stakes home video and recording project—made purely for founders Blair Tramel and Collin Cummins’ amusement—into a fully fledged five-piece, internationally touring art-punk band?
Their breakneck trajectory mirrors the velocity of their sound: wacky earworms and sonic wallops hurled faster than the speed of thought. That spark fuels their wild, hyperkinetic live shows—papier-mâché- and puppet-laden spectacles that first caught fire in Nashville basements before carrying them to global stages and, eventually, into the orbit of Third Man Records.
That’s how we got 2023’s Super Snooper. Though ostensibly their full-length debut, it felt more like feverishly flipping through a sketchbook: crammed with ideas that flashed with brilliance but vanished too quickly to land fully. Fun, feral, and just the right amount of silly, yes, but also frustratingly fragmented, too many ideas to count, all spilling out faster than the band could contain them.
Worldwide, their follow-up feels more like a proper full-length debut. Snooper are still bug-eyed, absurd, wound up. Don’t worry, most of the songs still clock in at under three minutes, but this time around they push each idea until it bursts, whether into a nervous ricochet or full-bodied collision.
Up first is the grinding, aggressive pulse of “Opt Out”. Blair Tramel’s clipped, matter-of-fact vocals cut through a pounding backdrop, the band locking into jagged unison behind her. It’s the sound of anxiety given structure, chaos hammered into danceable order. More importantly, rather than fizzling out or darting away, it resolves with a palpable finality—the kind you feel in your body even if you can’t quite articulate why.
What was once an art project oddity is now a real rock band in full command of its powers. As the record boils on, it becomes clear that the opener wasn’t a fluke, and once Worldwide starts, it doesn’t need to stop, not even to catch its breath. “Guard Dog” pulses like a nervous heartbeat over a bassline that throbs at a low boil. “Star 69” snarls with crunch and menace, building until it ruptures. Riffs expand and collapse with brutal efficiency, lurching forward tooth and fang, equal parts danger and vitality.
Even their take on the Beatles‘ “Come Together” thrums with improbable conviction. The laid-back shuffling we’ve come to know (and love) from the original becomes a pounding sprint, Tramel delivering John Lennon‘s lyrical nonsense with such ease you could almost be forgiven if you didn’t immediately recognize it as a Beatles cover.
Elsewhere throughout Worldwide, it’s Tramel’s restraint that resonates—straight-ahead phrasing that resists overemoting, as if the world might collapse if she lingered too long on one feeling. Around her, Connor Cummins (guitar/electronics), Conner Sullivan (guitar), Happy Haugen (bass), and Brad Barteau (drums) play with machine-tight exactitude. Every jagged piece snaps into place, no matter how improbable.
Each track on Worldwide works like a release valve in a tightly pressurized system, and Snooper operate it with a hard-won ease. What once seemed like fleeting sparks of real musical potential now burn steady: full-bodied songs, alive enough to soothe our itchy, swelling brains and our aching, racing human hearts.