In 2023 Nashville indie crew Snooper went from being the talk of the city’s underground, DIY scene to international festival favorites and critical darlings thanks to their over-the-top live shows and their Third Man Records release Super Snooper, a compilation of re-recorded versions of their previously released material. Since then they’ve become break outs of the “egg punk” sub-genre, and have now set themselves up to grow beyond that with they view as their true debut album Worldwide. It was produced in Los Angeles with John Congelton, the studio whiz who has worked on everyone from Phoebe Bridgers to Earl Sweatshirt, and explores the edges of the band’s sound while still retaining their furious pace and sharp, social commentary. In their discussion with WNXP they cover the choice of Congleton, why the egg punk label doesn’t bother them, how Devo’s art-first ethos inspired their approach and why being serious about “fun” doesn’t make them “silly.”
On working with John Congleton:
“I think we were expecting almost like a Portlandia skit where he’d be like ‘Do it again! Actually just give me the guitar I’m gonna do it!’ And he just basically does the record for us,” Connor Cummins joked, mimicking a stereotypically bullying producer voice. “But all of the things that he presented to us, even when we didn’t understand it first, by the end of the record they were all so subtle and really brought everything together.”
“Yeah, I think, for us, we have so much control over what we make. When we’re in Nashville can lock into our house and record everything on our own,” Blair Tramel elaborated. “We like having that control over what we’re putting out into the world. And bringing John into this was very scary for us in some way. And being in LA and everything felt like ‘Whoa did we make a mistake?’ But we ended up feeling really happy with the way everything came out.”
