Album review: Snõõper – Super Snõõper

Super Snõõper might be a low-key concept album about working out. Let’s look at the evidence: everyone’s wearing tracksuits on the cover, titles include Stretching, Fitness, and Running, and you feel absolutely exhausted by the time its 22 minutes and 14 songs have zipped by. There’s a certain temptation to call it a HIIT record, but, just… no.

The fabulously named Snõõper specialise in hyperactive punk (or ‘egg punk’ to be precise) that sounds like it has been unearthed from a long time ago. In reality, it’s the relatively box-fresh brainchild of Nashville duo Blair Tramel (vocals) and Connor Cummins (guitar), now with the addition of drummer Cam Sarrett, bassist Happy Haugen, and guitarist Ian Teeple. Signing to Jack White’s Third Man Records for the release of this debut album, it’s all glorious distortion and battered instruments hanging onto their last vestiges of useability. Nothing appears intended to be taken too seriously, production feels as-live, and fun is front and centre at all times.

Things kick off in earnest with the 34-second nursery rhyme riot of Bed Bugs (sample lyric: ‘Kill you in the day and then I squish you / Kill you in the night and then I eat you’) and the anarchic joy rarely relents thereafter. The aforementioned Fitness races out of the traps at the blast of a coach’s whistle and samples what sounds like a vintage TV interview with a gym-goer about their regime. Xerox is the closest the band come to sounding remotely pissed and even then, it’s a hoot. Aside from the comparatively epic closer of Running, which sticks around for a whole five minutes-plus, everything else gets in, does its thing, and flits off again with economic efficiency.

There might be a heavy dose of sarcasm in the seams of its shell-suited soul, but Super Snõõper is never arch or cynical. Rather, it’s an exhilarating endorphin rush you’ll want to return to again and again.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: The Spits, The 5.6.7.8’s, The King Khan & BBQ Show

Super Snõõper is out now via Third Man