Tyler Childers Has Always Seemed Comfortable in His Contradictions. He's an old-Soul Traditionalist Whose Throwback Ballads Regularly Go TikTok Viral; A recovery Alcoholic Who Still Releases Some of the 21st Century's Best Drinking Music; A Stadium-Sized Star Who Hasn'T performed His Most Popular Song in A Half-Decade.
For the Past Ten Years, Childers Has Been Preaching His Righteous Kentucky Gospel (See “Long Violent History,” Written in The Wake of George Floyd Protests). Part of That Project is showing that, in the contrast to How It's Typically Portrayed, Childers' Home Region of Appalachia is Just As Contradictory, Complex, and Full of Surprises As He is. Until now, he's anchored that Message to PurgatoryHIS 2017 Debut LP. It Remains His Best-Best-Best-Selling Lp and the Backbone of His Live Show, Despite Him Having Relesed Several Terrific Records (Like 2022's Can I take My Hounds to Heaven?) since.
That's destined to change with Snipe HunterChilders' Career-Redefining, Rick Rubin-Produced New Album. Over 13 Tracks, Childers Triples Down on the trailblazing he's Almedy Known for, singing about Hunting and Hindu Scripture While Name Checking Songs by Everyone from Cyndi Lauper to Stephen Foster and Exploring New Sonic Territory (Garage Rock, Phil Spector Pop) With His Longtime Bar Band-Turned-Arena-Headliners, The Food Stamps. Childers Couuld Be Taking Victory Laps, but Snipe Hunter Is Anything But: There's the Riff About Koala Std's on “Down Under;” The Hare Krishna Chants that Open Up The Scottish Folk-Inspired Ballad “Tom Cat and A Dandy;” The Verse About Lighting the “Devil's Dick on Fire” on “Getting to the Bottom;” The Drum Programming That Turns “Dirty Oaught Trill,” The Album-Closing Ode To A Dog Training Deer Hunter, Into a Stadium-Sized Sing-Along. Seldom Does Anyone with Childers' Level of Fame Take This Many Bold Leaps and Wacky Left-Turns. In a Risk-Averse Genre Like Country, It's Unheard of.
Snipe HunterHowever, Makes Such Risks Feel As Inevitable As Thoubledi. The album is a Thrilling, Entirely sui generis statement of Purpose that simultaneously closes the loop on Childers' Past (See the update on Fan Favorite “Nose on the grindstone”) While Pointing Toward His Boundless Future. In The Process, IT Establishes Him As Arguably The Most Singular and Visionary Artist in Country Music TODAY.
There Will Be Much Hoopla Surrounding Childers' Sonic Departures On This Record (In addition to Drum Programming, There's Vocoder, Mouth Harp, Clavinet and Modular Synths Played by Sylvan Esso's Nick Sanborn). But What Rubin Seems to Have Drawn Out of Childers, More Than Anyhing, is an Entirely New Level of Vocal Performance from the 34 Year-Old. Childers' Voice Has Never Sounded like this: on Snipe HunterHe Shouts, Shrieks, Coos, Croons, Belts and Whispers from one track to the Next. On “Getting to the Bottom,” He Leans Into Vibrato, Drawing Practicalally Four Syllables Out of the Word “DOUSED.” On “Cuttin 'Teeth,” a fictionalized such of his own as up as a Road-Dogging Twenty-Something, Childers Embraces New Vocal Register, Delivinging the tune with an affected What that Establishes The Distance The Modern-Day Childers Likely Feels from the Tale's protagonist. Just One Song Prior, on “Eatin 'Big Time,” He SPENDS MUCH of the Song Outright Screaming.
That Latter Song, The Album Opener, Shows The Kentucky Songwriter Fully in Command of His Pen. Leave It To Childers to take one of the mons togwriting tropes for an artist of his stature – The “It's so hard to be famous and rich” song—and turn it into a searing meditation on class anxiety and a gratitudes. “Ya Goddamn right I'm Flexing,” Childers Sings of His Weiss Watch, Before Deliving The Subsequent Line with So Much Fury You Can Practically Hear The Vein Popping in His Neck. “Have You Ever Got to Hold and Blow in Thousand fucking dollars? ”
Indeed, Childers' Writing Has Never Felt Sharper in Its Strange Specificity. Here here is describing alcoholism: “Do their livers screen for water?” Here here is Daydreaming About Bringing His Band Along for a Hydu Hindu Pilgrimage: “We'd Leave Behind All Our Mercch.” Here here is Arguing with the “Bro” Bouncer in His Otherwise Flowry devotional “Oneida.” Here here is singing the words Sworp, Joist, Tupperware, Crocidilian, and and booger. Here here, Mid-Song, Deliving Dog Training Commands: Gib Laut!
Childers Ties It All Together in “Poaclers,” An Understed Ballad That at First Glance, Feels Merely Like Yet another New Song About Hunting. But Childners Use His Portrait of a Character Caught Flouting Poaching Laws to Touch On A Long List of Big-Picture Themes: The Criminal Justice System, Small Town Gossip and Prejudice, The Crisis of American Drug Assdiction. By the End of the Mini-Masterpiece, The Song's Narrator is in Danger of Getting Into Some Trouble: “I'm too busy for prison,” He Explains. But the narrator is proud of Where He Comes from, and he just might be able to Find a way forward.
“I'm a miner at heart,” Childers Sings with a big wink, “I know I’d digs a way.”
