Album Review Sneaks - Highway Hypnosis

Already a figure in the Baltimore-Washington punk scene, Sneaks - aka Eva Moolchan - makes genre-bending music built on foundations of chilled-out post-punk. While her past offerings have skewed a more bass-heavy vibe, ‘Highway Hypnosis’ is an entirely different kind of entity. Her newest full-length is swarmed in rhythmic electronic beats resting on samples, synths and loops, at times a dark energy swirling underneath a restless, unsettled, beating sound.

Having already completed tour in support of Goat Girl as well as several of her own headline dates in Europe, Sneaks keeps growing from strength to strength. Each soundbite from ‘Highway Hypnosis’ is heavy and layered, every track an earworm. Each number clocks in at less than three minutes, and she emphasises single phrases over and over again - most notably in ‘Beliefs’, mutating the melody and rhythm and tone to create a sludgy, murky exosphere that wouldn’t feel out of place playing loudly from the speakers deep into a forgotten ‘90s rave. “Remove your beliefs and start again / ‘Cause all I want to do is start again”, she mantras repeatedly in a sort of hymn manner, creating an alien world of feelings and sounds that are clandestine and strange and odd but oddly liberating, all at the same time.