by Corey Sustarich
Blair Tramel and Connor Cummins (of Spodee Boy) are the tape and glue that make up the auditory collage and Nashville band, Snooper. Unrestrained by the flatness that sound alone can sometimes pose Blair uses her handmade props and visual animations as propulsion for the songwriting process. The total duration of music on their new EP, Snōōper, comes in just under seven minutes. Seven minutes of lean songs to dance bag-eyed in the living room while the morning tea is steeping. There is no fat to cut on these tracks. The aerodynamic synthesis of the duo’s melodies is Snooper, and they write some really fast songs!
They play their tune outside the cult of perfection. There is not a concern for a consistency in sound.
“We want to make whatever we think sounds exciting at the time.”
It’s an experiment gone right as much as it a song. There’s a lived-in sort of feeling to the sound of the songs. Smudges on the walls from the people living within them, salt on the counter where dinner was made. Tape hisses, songs start and stop when they want them to, and each song lives in its own world of audio production. Drums sound roomy and a bit far off. Vocals undulate beautiful and pissed patterns. Extra bits of sound sizzle in one ear and out the other. Then the song’s over.
Using soundbites archived from YouTube, Blair creates her audio collages. Splicing a meathead bumbling on about bulking up in the opening song, “Fitness,” Snooper imparts a tongue-in-cheek judgment on exercise culture, and the obsession with physical appearance over mental wellness. Sometimes the band’s lyrics are even derived from their archive of video links.
Covid, playing its devilish role, threw its wrench in the cogs. In the mutual desperation of all musicians they turned to the tools in their living room. As time pressed its thumb down on them they were slowly squeezed out the other side with music free of the rules of our ordinary world. They didn’t have to care if they could play it live anymore. The only question that mattered was “can I dance in the living room to it?” They subverted their circumstance and came out the other side with a great bit of music. Just under seven minutes of great music.
I caught up with Snooper’s Blair Tramel to discuss their new EP.
You really like workout materials: “Fitness” and music video clips. Do you yourself workout or is it a criticism of some kind?
Ha! A little bit of both! Fitness definitely pokes fun at the stereotypical “jock” type, but I’m definitely a big fan of exercise and know that when I don’t move my body, my brain feels out of wack! I think some people only work out to look good and some people work out to feel good! I think the key is finding a physical activity you love so much that you trick yourself into working out. Exercising shouldn’t be hard and people that make it look that way, are ruining it for everybody else!
The music sounds like audio collage in many ways and when paired with the music videos it is really apparent. Do you intrinsically tie your visual art and music?
For sure. Once a song is finished and ready for vocals, I come up with an idea for the video before I start to write the lyrics. I start thinking about what props I have available and brainstorming ways I can animate them. I also am addicted to watching old commercial comps on YouTube and a lot of inspiration comes from that! If I see an old commercial I like, I record it, save it, and wait until the right time to use it for a video. If I’m having trouble coming up with lyrics, I go to my video archives and look for inspiration there!
It sounds like you don’t record anything that can’t be reproduced live by the two of you. Is that true or am I being hopeful? With that, do you have plans to play live anytime soon?
We were practicing with a live band before Covid and were stoked on the idea of playing live shows, but then the world stopped turning and no one was able to do anything. The pandemic went on for a lot longer than anyone expected so we began to get a bit experimental and started using drum machines and other gadgets and Snooper became more of a recording project. While we were recording, we would consider if we should use the drum machine and whatnot because we knew it would pose a challenge to us to recreate live, but live shows felt further and further away, so we decided to just make music that people might want to dance to in their own homes. We would love to perform all of our songs live, but have definitely made it a bit challenging for ourselves so we will need to get creative!
A lot of what you guys make is so primordial and full of forward momentum; Do you have a hard time staving off the oppression of perfection?
We had so much time to record over quarantine that we really got to mess around with our sound. Plus, it was just Connor and I recording at that time so we could spend as much time as we wanted figuring things out. We hope to switch the sound up on the next record and don’t worry at all about consistency of sound! We want to make whatever we think sounds exciting at the time.
As a non-Nashvillian, is this the music we can expect to come bursting up through the cracks in the coming months or do you feel more like outsider art?
At this point, Snooper is a recording project and we do whatever we want with our sound because no one is expecting anything of us, which is awesome! Shows are just getting started up again here very slowly, so I can’t really answer this question until we see more live music! I think people experimented with their sound a lot over quarantine, and I can’t wait to see what this looks like! We just can’t wait to join the bands we love on live shows.