by Matt Watton (@brotinus)
Nashville’s Snooper gives us everything we could ever want from an egg punk EP: ripping-hot riffs, shrieking guitar, pummelling drums, half-sung vocals about modern malaise. Their latest five track EP, Town Topic, clocking in at less than eight minutes, sounds like a Devo record mistakenly played at 45 RPM. But this is no trite rehash of punk tropes, and the band’s ear for tension-and-release melodies and lo-fi, chorus-soaked vocals makes for an infectious, eminently relistenable batch of tunes.
Now, it shouldn’t take longer to read a review than listen to the album being reviewed, so I’ll follow Snooper’s lead with some quickfire takes. Opener “Powerball” is a ripper, but makes use of space with wailing, half-in-tune bends and punchy, melodic drums, before completely falling apart at the end (just so you don’t get too complacent). “Town Topic,” driven by staccato vocals and guitar, finds the whole band bouncing in unison; the melodic “Xerox” lilts along as vocalist Blair Tramel sings disaffected couplets about uninteresting posers. The 49-seconds of “Inventory” sound like something off an early Minutemen record, while the airy, digital delay and synthy interjections of the closer “Subdivision” are like an after-dinner mint to cleanse the palate.
Bottom line – go listen to Snooper. I can’t think of a better way to spend seven and half minutes.