I was introduced to Tyler Childers about 3 years ago while partaking in one of my guilty pleasures, watching reaction videos on Youtube. The song was Nose on the Grindstone and was performed as a part of an OurVinyl sessions recording where it was Tyler, and his guitar. The sound was raw and unfiltered, and the lyrics and music was haunting and rang to a part of my soul I wasn’t ready for. Needless to say I went down a rabbit hole of acquainting myself with Tyler’s music and I fell in love hard.

A year later he would release his album titled Russlin’ in the Rain. It was amazing, but caught the ire of a subsect of mainstream country audiences because the music video did one of the most scandalous things you could imagine. Brace yourself.. It had a gay couple in it. That’s right, the video showed the story of two men who coal miners and in love. The internet filled with cry;s of “We’ve lost Tyler to the woke mob.” It just went to show that no one had ever really listened to Tyler’s music before, and while the song itself made no mention of anything other than love, the video created a firestorm of hate across the internet.

So when Tyler’s lead single off his upcoming album was a studio recording of the same song that made me fall I nlove with the man’s music, Nose on the Grindstone, the fallow up single was a long time fan favorite and previously unreleased on any album, titled Oneda. The cesspool that is the internet rejoiced as it appeared that “Old Tyler had returned!”.

But “Old Tyler” had a massive trick and troll job up his sleeve.

On July 25^th, Tyler Childers dropped his 7^th studio album SNIPE HUNTER, produced by renowned music producer Rick Rubin, with all 13 Songs penned by Childers.

While Nose on the Grindstone, and Ondea are huge nods to the music that Tyler made his mark with in the music industry, they almost feel out of place on SNIPE HUNTER, as Childers finds a way to evolve his song writing and music into an amazingly diverse album.

I’ve tried for the last 3 months to rank the songs from best to worse and I’ve struggled as they are all mostly really damn good but with different feels. Tyler’s made a massive success of writing poignant ballads and love songs, and outside of Oneda, those are no where to be found here. While this has turned old school Childers fans to rage billed rants on social media, it’s a decision that ultimately pays off.

The lead song on the album, Eatin’ Big Time, is the story of Tyler hunting and prepping his own food in the wild and going home to his loving wife. But, that’s just the surface of it. You dig further in and you realize what Tyler is hunting is another man. Most notably, a rich man who lives in “a mother fuckin’ mansion”. That’s right.. Childers wrote a song about eating the rich. And it’s amazing, and fun and catchy as shit. He also devotes a whole verse to his wife, whom is a massive Beyonce fan, and he shows it with multitudes of references to her music in the verse. Considering Beyonce’s polarizing place in country music in the last 2 years, I found this absolutely brilliant. Throw in that the song’s initials are EBT, and his bands name is The Food Stamps, and it’s one of the best fuck yous to the corporate world we live in, especially in Nashville.

Tyler also found a way on several occasions to take shots at his “fans” who turned on his for having a music video with a gay couple. In the song Poacher’s he sings..

—

I can hear ’em now talkin’, ah, God, it is scandalous
His Papaw’d be rollin’, I don’t know where he strayed
I know that you’d know him, he’s the one on the rad’ya
He’s the one with the vid’ya of the coal minin’ gays

I can hear ’em now talkin’, ah, God, it is scandalous
He could have been somethin’ if he weren’t such a mess
If he hadn’t went broke, God cancel him sideways
We lost us another to the others, I guess

—

There’s a song referencing the devil’s penis, another talking about Koala bears having STD’s, and the song of the summer, IN MY OPINION, about biting people if you have rabies.

The biggest standout for me, though, the song Dirty Ought Trill, about Dylan, a friend Tyler made in Nashville. A black man who raises Belgian Malinois, who grow up in the city and had no clue who Childers was nor any part of the country music scene. They became fast friends, and was very skilled with a hunting riffle earning his nickname and the title of the closing song on the record. It quickly found a place on my work out playlist.

SNIPE HUNTER is my favorite album to be released since NF’s CLOUDS album in 2021. I’ve found myself listening to the entire thing almost daily since release. While the overall feel of the album isn’t stereotypical Childers, lacking is flair of amazingly worded love songs, it is none the less a Tyler Childers album at it’s core. Amazing song writing, with a lot today about the current state of the world.