Snipe Hunter

Tyler Childers

Released on 7/25/25 by Hickman Holler Records - RCA Records
Main artists: Tyler Childers
Genre: Country

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Tyler Childers' seventh album is a thrill—full of fury and mischief, fun and a looseness we don't always see from the country music rebel. It all kicks in with "Eatin' Big Time," a knockout Southern-rock boogie that's a metaphorical threat and promise about dog-eat-dog American values. Childers delivers lines like punches: "There's a man in the doorway/ Of a motherfucking mansion/ Aiming at the feeder/ Where you've sat to take your feast," he sings, careful to pronounce the profanity properly, not lazily or colloquially dropping the G. The narrator goes on to kill ("I carved that fat-neck mother/ Right down to the bone"), throw the meat in Tupperware, and take it home for his true love to fry up, while Matt Rowland's organ pushes in, rusty and testy.

Childers is one of the best songwriting storytellers we have, bobbing and weaving between devastating literary imagery and hillbilly language like "Pappaw" and "on the radi-ya" and "vide-ya" in "Poachers," a beefed-up serving of Seeger-style folk. Atmospheric "Watch Out," tucked under a groovy cosmic veil, reminisces about foraging for black cohosh and oyster mushrooms while on high alert for copperheads and mama bears. "Cuttin' Teeth" is an Appalachian lullaby, shrouded in the haze of James Barker's pedal steel, about a guy not fit to make a living any other way but by fronting a band. Maybe Childers is singing about himself, but he shows real affection and grace for the character, sounding as gentle as he ever does while Sylvan Esso's Amelia Meath and Daughter of Swords' Alex Sauser-Monnig (who are bandmates in Mountain Man) soothe with siren harmonies. "If he swings the bat left-handed/ He's going to walk at least," he says, athleticizing the singer's stage command. Other songs are clearly personal. Chimes-brightened "Getting to the Bottom," occasionally raising its lip with a warning of outlaw guitar snarl, with sober Childers imagining what he's missing while his friends are together "stumbling through the streets … Do their livers scream for water/ Are their brains about to swell/ Through the soft part of their temple/ While they grind their teeth like hell?"

Raw-edged "Oneida"—all campfire guitar and romantic strings—and bluesy "Nose on the Grindstone" (which is as bone-dry as producer Rick Rubin's legendary work with Johnny Cash) are known fan favorites. But there are so many surprises here. "Bitin' List" is full of piss and vinegar: "If there ever comes a time that I got rabies/ You're high on my bitin' list." "Down Under" is a lively, '80s Springsteen-esque spark about kangaroos and koalas not being as cuddly as they seem. Two-stepping shuffle "Tirtha Yatra" is named for the holy pilgrimage to holy Buddhist or Hindu sites, while "Tomcat and a Dandy" includes a Hare Krishna chant. They feel more like George Harrison experimentation than Ringo Starr novelty, and it's fascinating to see and hear how Rubin has apparently given Childers license to lighten up. And the whoops and hollers that precede the title track let you know it's going to be a corker—a Cajun-flavored rockabilly rug-cutter that doesn't let up. That title suggests Childers is chasing something that doesn't exist, but he himself remains the real deal. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Snipe Hunter

Tyler Childers

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Eatin' Big Time Explicit