Rating: 6.5

What do you get when you cross Hindu scripture, hunting and koala STDs? Believe it or not, “Snipe Hunter.”

The 13-track collection is country singer Tyler Childers’ seventh studio album, coming almost two years after his last release, “Rustin’ in the Rain,” and it’s got a little something for everybody: Childers staples like songs about hunting, love and Appalachian angst, deviations varying in nature from psychedelic to spiritual and the odd silly song to bring the tone down every once in a while.

Half of the tracks sound very Childers, and the rest are … weird. It’s as if they were recorded through a cell phone mic, or like they’re played beneath this ever-present, ethereal radio static. This is likely the influence of producer Rick Rubin, with whom Childers partnered for “Snipe Hunter” and who has produced for just about everyone under the sun, from Beastie Boys to Danzig to Johnny Cash.

To be fair, Childers himself asked Rubin to collab, and later described his vision for the album: “Like acid but shorter, like nitrous but longer … an album … a trip. Completely cosmically discombobulating the psychobilly. But keeping his bib overalls [as] intact as possible.” After writing and recording the tracks, Childers sent them off to Nick Sanborn — one half of the electropop duo Sylvan Esso — to, and I quote, “put the drugs on” them.

As visionary and ambitious as the album is, I don’t know that it necessarily lands with his fan base. It wasn’t entirely unwelcoming to be greeted by garage rock and oversaturated hip-hop when I expected Appalachian country, but it took some getting used to. At least I can confidently say the album lives up to the “cosmically discombobulating” acid trip he imagined.

Yes, it is visionary. Yes, it is ambitious. But it’s hard to say how much of Childers is really in this album.

It’s a complete deviation. His lyrics and their charm are still there, even in some of the weird songs, but the place where Childers excels — at least for me — is his voice. I thought I didn’t like country music before I heard the “Purgatory” album. It wasn’t a genre I grew up with, and probably wasn’t one I ever would have sought out had I not listened to “I Swear to God” and fallen in love with his voice.

The songs on this album in which his voice is put on display are few. There is none of the passion or soul that you see in “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?” and a lot of the tracks that do feature actual singing have that wavy tin can effect — the “drugs” — that tank the quality.

I don’t want to give the impression that the album is bad. There are notable standouts: “Oneida” is lovely, “Bitin’ List” is hilarious and “Dirty Ought Trill” has been stuck in my head since I first heard it.

A word on each of these: “Oneida” is a cute song about a man who fell in love with an older woman, “Bitin’ List” is about a list of people he would bite if he ever got rabies and “Dirty Ought Trill” is about a man and his hunting dog — a Belgian Malinois, also known as “maligator” because of their aggressive nature.

I love the slice-of-life characters Childers paints into his tracks, and I’m always here for the Appalachia-isms he peppers in here and there: tick-full, copperhead-mean and sworp, to name a few.

The album highlights Hindu, a religion which Childers first began to embrace in his teenage years, in songs like “Tirtha Yatra” and in the Hare Krishna chant in the background of “Tomcat and a Dandy.” “Tirtha Yatra” has a fun step-down melody that’s almost as much of an earworm as the chorus of “Dirty Ought Trill.” Dharma, or (to oversimplify) the Hindu concept of duty, is a recurring motif throughout the album.

All this to say: Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad, it just has a lot of skip tracks for me. “Down Under” is silly but way too pop-y for my taste, and a few of the more Rubin-esque oversaturated songs are low on my list of repeats when I could be listening to “Purgatory” or “Live on Red Barn Radio I & II.”

Give “Snipe Hunter” a listen and see for yourself. Maybe this cosmic country discombobulation is exactly what you’ve been waiting to hear. If nothing else, it finally gave us a “Nose to the Grindstone” release that wasn’t through OurVinyl.

Charis Adkins is a former editor for The Battalion and a former student, Class of 2025.