Given the central place drum machines hold in egg punk, it’s surprising that Snooper—arguably the genre’s current flag bearers—only started using one late last year. Between tours and day jobs, the Nashville five-piece finally stumbled onto egg punk’s mechanical pulse. Singer Blair Tramel and guitarist Connor Cummins began sketching songs around the relentless thump of a vintage Zoom MRT-3, captivated by the power of repetition. The result is Worldwide—a record that feels like an electric jolt, more muscular and hyperactive than 2023’s art-school debut Super Snõõper, yet still warped by the band’s gleefully anarchic imagination.
From the moment Worldwide starts, Snooper move like athletes running drills in double-time. The opener, “Opt Out,” jitters with a twitchy, descending melody; “Worldwide” throws a shadow of gloomy ’80s new wave across their usual hyperpop clatter. Every member—Tramel, Cummins, guitarist Conner Sullivan, bassist Happy Haugen, and drummer Brad Barteau—keeps the tempo at a sprint. When electronics join the race on “Star 69” and “Pom Pom,” Snooper sound like they’ve discovered a new energy source. “They made me the team captain/And told me, ‘Make it happen,’” Tramel cheers on “Pom Pom,” as her bandmates respond with manic precision: scraping guitar strings, chopping drum hits into digital static, even tossing in barking samples for percussive flair.
On Worldwide, Snooper thrive by confronting the listener head-on, daring them to keep up. Updated versions of earlier tracks “Company Call” and “On Line” trade lo-fi scrappiness for full-throttle clarity, with Haugen and Barteau’s rhythm section thundering forward, nearly outpacing the drum machine itself. And yes—Snooper really are playing that fast. No editing tricks, just raw velocity and calloused fingers. Their breakneck reinterpretation of the Beatles’ “Come Together” proves the point: the classic bassline quivers like rubber, the tempo doubles, and the song flashes by like a highlight reel. It’s chaotic, absurd, and completely Snooper.
Lyrically, Worldwide is Tramel’s most expressive work yet. After years of fans shouting her words back on tour, she’s learned how to turn her own voice into an engine of motivation. “Where did all these words come from? Were they borrowed from someone?” she asks on “Guard Dog,” as if startled by her own self-discovery. Her new verbosity adds texture to Snooper’s usually short-circuited pop bursts—stretching their sense of play without slowing their pulse.
By the album’s final stretch, Snooper cash in all that manic energy for something sprawling and strange. “Relay” shifts from gritty punk to fuzzed-out swagger, feeding into “Subdivision,” a four-minute psych-rock marathon that channels Osees’ heady garage drive. Recorded with John Congleton, their first studio producer, Worldwide transforms Snooper’s frantic live energy into something sharper and more elastic. The drum machine doesn’t limit them—it bends under their weight.
Far from polishing their chaos, Worldwide proves that Snooper can level up without losing their scrappy charm. They sound faster, tighter, and freer than ever—like a band that finally found its pulse, and can’t stop racing it.
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