Tyler Childers Snipe Hunter
Tyler Childers's Snipe Hunter launches as a bracing collision of Appalachian storytelling and adventurous sonic detours, and critics agree it mostly hits the mark. Across five professional reviews the record earned an 85.6/100 consensus score, with reviewers praising how songs such as “Eatin' Big Time”, “Bitin' List”, “Nose On the Grindstone”, “Tom Cat and a Dandy” and “Getting to the Bottom” emerge as the collection's clearest standouts. The opener “Eatin' Big Time” repeatedly surfaces as a high-water mark, while quieter cuts like “Nose On the Grindstone” and “Oneida” provide the album's intimate counterbalance.
Critics consistently note themes of addiction, working-class struggle, hunting and rural life, and a Southern gothic sensibility threaded through sharp character studies and dark humor. Several reviews highlight Childers' vocal reinvention and rawness - from enraged howls to vibrato-rich confessionals - and they point to deliberate genre-mixing: blues-rock punch, ragtime gallop, psychedelic interludes and even interfaith chants all push the record beyond straight roots country. Reviewers praise the songwriting's vivid images and moral contradictions while acknowledging the album's looseness and experimentation as both its charm and occasional risk.
Taken together, professional reviews frame Snipe Hunter as a daring, often essential entry in Childers' catalog that balances grit and imagination; the critical consensus suggests the record is worth attention for its standout tracks and for the new directions they indicate. Below, individual reviews expand on where those risks pay off and where the album's messy ambition leaves room for debate.
Critics' Top Tracks
The standout songs that made critics take notice
Tom Cat and a Dandy
1 mention
"More delicate and mournful, “Tom Cat and a Dandy” finds its balladry underpinned by a choir"— Slant Magazine
Eatin' Big Time
5 mentions
"On the album’s opening track, “Eatin’ Big Time,” Childers’s voice, sounding almost enraged"— Slant Magazine
Nose On The Grindstone
4 mentions
"On “Nose on the Grindstone,” Childers works his voice into a howl as he sings about the ethics instilled by his working-class upbringing."— Slant Magazine
More delicate and mournful, “Tom Cat and a Dandy” finds its balladry underpinned by a choir
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
Eatin' Big Time
Cuttin' Teeth
Oneida
Getting to the Bottom
Bitin' List
Nose On The Grindstone
Watch Out
Down Under
Poachers
Snipe Hunt
Tirtha Yatra
Tomcat and a Dandy
Dirty Ought Trill
What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 6 critics who reviewed this album
Critic's Take
Tyler Childers rides a cast of magnetic characters across Snipe Hunter, and the best songs - notably “Bitin’ List” and “Down Under” - are vivid character studies that stick. Mullin’s prose leans on dark humor and vivid image, so it reads here like a twisted short-story cycle where “Bitin’ List” brays and cajoles while “Down Under” thrills with careening rhythm and a buzz saw solo. The opener “Eatin’ Big Time” sets a high watermark, while “Oneida” supplies bittersweet comedy; together they explain why fans searching for the best tracks on Snipe Hunter will find plenty to sing along to. The album’s blend of taboo urges, looming violence, and knee-slap humor makes its best songs unforgettable and essential.
Key Points
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The best song, "Bitin’ List," is the standout because its minimalism, stomping percussion, and Childers’ convincing hoots make a heinous protagonist perversely lovable.
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The album’s core strengths are vivid character studies, dark Southern gothic themes, deft production, and Childers’ strong performative choices.
Themes
Critic's Take
Tyler Childers sharpens his focus on Snipe Hunter with songs that make the album’s best tracks - like “Eatin' Big Time” and “Tomcat and a Dandy” - feel both combustible and intimate. The reviewer's voice finds Childers alternating between enraged howl and plaintive reflection, and that tension is why listeners seeking the best songs on Snipe Hunter will be drawn to the blues-rock punch of “Eatin' Big Time” and the mournful ballast of “Tom Cat and a Dandy”. Across the record, tunes such as “Snipe Hunt” and “Bitin' List” provide angsty, catchy high points, while quieter pieces deepen the album’s philosophical reach. This is an album whose best tracks are memorable not just for melody, but for the illuminating turns of phrase and haunting images that stick with you.
Key Points
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The best song is memorable for its vocal intensity and blues-rock immediacy, making “Eatin' Big Time” the album's highlight.
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The album’s core strengths are its synthesis of varied sounds, evocative imagery, and a sustained philosophical concern with nature, religion, and mortality.
Themes
Critic's Take
In his vivid, conversational way Ben Salmon argues that Tyler Childers gets weirder and wider on Snipe Hunter, and the best songs - notably “Nose On the Grindstone” and “Tirtha Yatra” - prove it. He salutes the raw, sparsely arranged intensity of “Nose On the Grindstone” while celebrating the intertwined, psychedelic honesty of “Tirtha Yatra” and “Tomcat and a Dandy”. The review insists the rollicking twang-rock of tracks like “Eatin' Big Time” and the power-poppy catchiness of “Down Under” make this one of Childers' most adventurous records. Overall, Salmon frames the album as a clear-eyed expansion of Childers' sound that rewards longtime fans and surprises them too.
Key Points
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“Nose On the Grindstone” is best for its long-awaited, sparsely arranged intensity and fan significance.
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Snipe Hunter’s strengths are adventurous genre-mixing, rawness, and the balance of humor and spiritual curiosity.
Themes
Critic's Take
Millan Verma hears Tyler Childers relaxing into a new looseness on Snipe Hunter, which makes the best tracks - “Oneida” and “Nose on the Grindstone” - feel like homespun revelations rather than retreads. The reviewer's voice revels in the album's pleasantly weird detours, calling out the Southern-rock charge of the title cut and the ragtime gallop of “Bitin' List” while insisting the heart remains in the stripped-down truth songs. Verma frames these songs as proof that Childers can wander into Hare Krishna chants and Aussie ecology and still sound like the Appalachian storyteller who mattered from Purgatory onward. This is a record that celebrates depth by loosening its grip, making its best tracks ring truer for their newfound freedom.
Key Points
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The best song work comes from stripped-down, poignant tracks like "Oneida" that recall Childers' Purgatory-era truth-telling.
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The album's core strength is balancing Appalachian tradition with adventurous detours into psychedelia, Hindu motifs, and loosened production.
Themes
Critic's Take
Tyler Childers leans into messiness on Snipe Hunter, and the record’s best songs — “Eatin' Big Time”, “Getting to the Bottom”, “Poachers” — make those risks feel inevitable. The opener “Eatin' Big Time” is a harrowing, rage-filled meditation on class anxiety that announces the album’s boldness, while “Getting to the Bottom” shows a new, vibrato-rich vocal daring. Elsewhere, the understated “Poachers” ties hunting to addiction, justice, and small-town life with devastating clarity. In short, the best tracks on Snipe Hunter pair wacky left turns with sharper songwriting and a reinvented vocal palette.
Key Points
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The best song, "Eatin' Big Time," is the album’s fiercest statement, pairing screaming vocals with sharp class-anxiety lyrics.
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The album’s core strengths are its fearless sonic experimentation and Childers’ newly expansive vocal performances tied to vivid, specific songwriting.