Snipe Hunter: Tyler Childers

Snipe Hunter

Tyler Childers

While Tyler Childers’s past albums each tend to stick to one specific feel, Snipe Hunter is energetic and unexpected in both sound and lyric. The album has both pretty country ballads and quirky songs with surprising lyrics. “Eatin’ Big Time” and “Cuttin’ Teeth” are about money, hard work, and pride, but then comes “Oneida,” a sweet and blushing love song from a younger man to an older woman, and a rerecorded version of “Nose on the Grindstone,” which adds emotional instrumentals to one of Childers’s most beautiful and popular tracks. Snipe Hunter has some comedic songs too, though, like “Bitin’ List” and especially “Down Under,” about Australia’s variety of scary wildlife. Many of Snipe Hunter’s other songs include themes of Appalachian life or references to Childers’s past albums. Quirky songs might not be for everyone, but it’s clear that Snipe Hunter reflects a newfound freedom in Childers’s music.

-Maya Ekman