It is certainly a surprise to hear Tyler Childers fantasize about making a pilgrimage to Kurukshetra—an Indian city north of Delhi where the Mahabharata was set—but it is not a shock. While he may be the first person with a Kentucky drawl to sing about dharma, rolling “like the Pandavas” with his brothers, and bringing his wife and mother to a nirvana-like oasis where they sing Hare Krishna and West Virginia fiddle standards alike, it is, somehow, not completely out of the way for one of country music’s most singular artists.

Ever since Purgatory, his now-classic 2017 album, turned him into a star Appalachia could call their own, Childers has made it his mission to redefine what that means. Yes, his father worked in the coal industry. Yes, he grew up in a trailer that sat next to a Baptist church. And yes, he plays a fiddle as if he’s soundtracking bootleggers in a wagon race. But he also was one of the few country stars to speak up in support of Black Lives Matter in 2020. Two years later, he made a gospel record that preached interfaith harmony, and more recently, he became the first country artist on a major label to release a music video that features a gay love story.

For years, Childers has dealt in statements and had his “legitimacy” as a country musician pinballed by press and fans. His music has never been co-opted by outside noise, but his releases have been neatly packaged and limited in scope. Long Violent History is strictly a fiddle record; Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? is his take on gospel; Rustin’ in the Rain channels Elvis. On Snipe Hunter, however, he lets everything hang in the wind, blending vintage ballads, rockabilly, and psychedelia with renewed artistic freedom. It’s his most free-spirited and pleasantly weird album to date.

Perhaps it was the magic touch of producer Rick Rubin or the tranquility of recording in Hawaii and Malibu that allowed Childers to drop his shoulders. Regardless, Snipe Hunter reveals his quirks while staying true to the traditions that made him. There is a Southern-rock ripper that sounds like an oncoming panic attack (“Snipe Hunt”), a ragtime stomp about the person Childers would bite first if he had rabies (“Bitin’ List”), and a pair of tracks on the back end (“Tirtha Yarti,” “Tomcat and a Dandy”) that play on his admiration of Hinduism, even interpolating a Hare Krishna chant in the style of a 19th-century battle hymn. (In a GQ interview, Childers described a recent trip to India, where he became acquainted with “Krishna devotees” whose practice gave him “just as much strength and guidance as his Christian upbringing.”)

Even with these more experimental elements, this is still a Tyler Childers album, rooted in vulnerable songwriting and tonal grit. Take “Eatin’ Big Time,” where he scowls like a mad, gluttonous king and gives a gruesome account of gutting prey, eventually demanding to know if his audience has ever had the chance “to hold and blow a thousand fucking dollars?!” This chaotic, semi-ironic opener leads into “Cuttin’ Teeth,” a serene, pedal steel-led tune about the early days of a country singer, presumably Childers, who lives gig-to-gig with a “bunch of West Virginia deadbeats.” He sounds wistful, as if things were a whole lot simpler back then.

The most poignant tracks are two singles, “Oneida” and “Nose on the Grindstone,” known to fans from previously released live versions. Both originate in Childers’ Purgatory era, a period defined by hunger and heartache, and follow the stripped-down, “three chords and the truth” recipe that shot him to fame. The polished, Rubin-produced studio versions simultaneously recall Childers’ initial flame and mark its evolution—an evolution realized in the richly layered arrangement of “Getting to the Bottom,” where he celebrates his nearly six years of sobriety by wondering just how hammered his old drinking buddies are right now.

As intentional and disciplined as Childers’ releases have been, it’s refreshing to hear him make an album without an agenda or a rulebook. Through the detours into Australian ecology and the cheeky mispronunciations of Sanskrit words, he’s still what everyone says he is: an Appalachian man with a penchant for storytelling. Snipe Hunter is his first record to capture and celebrate the depth behind that.