Hi, everyone. Latitude Longitude here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of the new Snõõper album, Worldwide.

This is a brand new record from Tennessee natives, Snõõper. It is their second full length and also their second album for Jack White's own Third Man Records, which remains to be a pretty cool nod for the band. And this bit of industry support, I think, is beginning to show on this new album.

Now, if you remember, the band's debut LP – which was great, in my opinion – felt like an extended version of the very raw, noisy, fast, zany brand of synth punk that they have made their special sound in their hearts, which you can catch on a lot of their earlier EPs. It's the music that sounds like alien children, moshing and stage diving in a video that you're watching on the internet, played at 1.5 speed.

The tracklist worked in a very quick succession of musical bursts. A lot of the song is lasting from 35 seconds to 120 seconds. Meanwhile, the closing track "Running" was this groovy five-minute post-punk number that took up almost a quarter of the entire album's run time.

But I think Worldwide here is smoothing out some of the differences between the shorter songs and the longer songs here. It's making a world of difference with an overall album run time now of 28 minutes. And while still the last track on the album is the longest, it's not by much. As a great deal of the band's songs this time around span to two minutes at the very least, while Snõõper is still leaning into the fuzzy guitars, speedy drums, and front woman Blair Tramel's nasally, shouty vocals that sound like they're soaked in these chorus effects that give them this almost hot pink or construction site green color to them.

And while the band's performance style hasn't really changed all that much on Worldwide, it is still very tight. The sound, the way their instrumentation is presented, it's very condensed. But I'm hearing a little bit more in the way of dynamics. Like, I can actually make out the bass, the drums have a bit more frequency range to them, more punch, and the mixes overall aren't quite as claustrophobic. And the song structures this time around have a bit more character and detail to them.

So when Snõõper is dishing out a pretty memorable or catchy idea, it tends to stick around for a minute. Like with the jagged drums and rhythm guitars on the opening track, "Opt Out", where Tramel can be heard singing like a manic person talking to themselves in the midst of a mental breakdown. Or the really funny storytelling on the song "Company Car", where Tramel describes what she does once she has access to a vehicle provided by her job – going fast, seeing friends, going to Planet Fitness – over these pumping passages of fuzz bass and what sounds like whammy bar guitars.

The title track is also a highlight which features these undeniable grooves coming off the drums and grinding guitars to which make for a perfect match to Blair's shouty, almost cheerleader routine. "Hologram" is one of a few tracks on the record that feels like I'm hearing from the first-person perspective of a computer or program, a piece of software that's functioning. Obviously an interesting concept. And "Star 6 9", like "Opt Out", is a callback to telephones.

And I don't know, when I account for a bunch of material on the band's last record, too, I feel like this song just adds to this world-building the band is engaged in, consciously or not, where a lot of their songs center around tech, sports, communication tools, even games. As the song "Blockhead", it feels like the music and the imagery that would come to mind if you were trying to play a game of Minecraft on cocaine. As far as a musical reference point, I don't know, the intensity, the wackiness of the band's playing in the sound on this track, it reminds me of the Dead Kennedys' hardcore era with In God We Trust Incorporated.

But there's an even more interesting musical nod in the final moments of the record because miraculously, we get a cover of the Beatles' "Come Together" out of nowhere, which I feel like for Snõõper's sound and style isn't completely out of the norm, given that I feel like they are a part of a lineage of a long history of left field, very weird little post-punk bands that will throw in that one odd cover in the tracklist and do just a very turned inside out version of a popular or well-known song, be it either Devo with their version of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" or the Feelies with "Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except for Me and My Monkey)", and the Raincoats with "Lola".

But yeah, now they're doing this Beatles "Come Together" cover over here, and it's like their speed-running the song in the funniest way possible, and it's still somehow very catchy and very entertaining.

The rest of the tracks on the album I found to be maybe a bit more of a mixed bag. "Pom Pom", for example, is one of a few cuts on the where, though I do like the speed and intensity, the riffs just feel a little too skeletal and basic to be memorable by any means. On top of that, Tramel's vocals are really fighting to work through the scuzz and the muck in the mix, as much as I do think her meta-commentary on cheerleading with this track is funny.

But the closing track I did enjoy quite a bit, as it is a cerebral moment for Snõõper. Maybe not the sharp example of songwriting that "Running" was to a degree, but it sees them dabbling in more spacey, psychedelic production, more of a jammier direction as far as the instrumentation goes to. It's not just simply a point A - point B type song like every other track here. They're feeling things out, exploring the boundaries, and the track is more interesting for it.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind hearing the band do this maybe just a little bit more on a future project or something like that. Because if there is one other major issue that I have with this album, it is that overall, I feel like the aesthetics and the songwriting, can feel a little one note, which for a record that is landing around 20-28 minutes, that sweet spot 30 minute mark isn't the worst thing in the world. But once you start expanding past that, you really do have to consider presenting the audience with a wider array of sounds if they are going to stay engaged or not feel fatigued or losing track of what's happening in the midst of a record like this. That, again, is so punky, so fast, so intense, so noisy.

But that is the Snõõper's sound we know and love. They're doing it once again on Worldwide, which I think is very much in the ballpark, enjoyability-wise and creativity-wise, in comparison to their first record, which I also loved, which is why I'm feeling a strong 7 to a light 8 on this LP.

Anthony Fantano, Snõõper, Worldwide, Forever.