Snocaps – ‘Snocaps’ review: Crutchfield family reunion is a fabulously melodic indie-rock celebration

Allison and Katie Crutchfield reconnect on a record that is both a throwback and a vision of two brilliant songwriters in the here and now

There’s this one Bruce Springsteen quote that your therapist probably loves. It’s about a car, filled with all the people you used to be. “A new self can get in, but the old selves can’t ever get out,” he said. On their first album as Snocaps, the Crutchfield sisters locate a seam of optimism that runs beneath this idea, reconnecting with their formative creative relationship while also celebrating all the ways they’ve grown and changed while apart.

In the decade and a half since they walked away from P.S. Eliot, the rickety punk band that first introduced them to the world, the twins have almost evolved in parallel, working together on and off while striking out to develop their own individual styles. Here, they wed the uber-melodic indie-rock of Allison’s work with Swearin’ to the winsome Americana of Katie’s recent records with Waxahatchee, finding that the sibling chemistry that fired their earliest thrashings has only become more nuanced and effective over time.

In tandem with multi-tasking bandmates MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook – both close collaborators on Waxahatchee’s excellent 2024 LP ‘Tigers Blood’ – they deliver songs that are warm and unfussy while accentuating the sisters’ complementary strengths: Allison’s way with a winding hook, Katie’s patient, quietly dramatic vocal patterns. Both sound just grand with Lenderman chooglin’ off to one side, with Snocaps’ largely bare-bones guitar, bass, drums setup giving plenty of room for some quietly impressive arrangements to breathe.

There’s the Katie-fronted slow-burn ‘Doom’ – a song that feels big and sonically weighty without ever seeming calculated – sitting next to the mile-a-minute melodies of Allison’s ‘Over Our Heads’, its fastidious writing perfectly undercut by a loping Camper Van Beethoven slacker vibe.

‘Heathcliff’, all Go-Betweens jangle and picked bass, has a hook that seems to grow legs with each new syllable, recalling some of the best moments on Allison’s underrated 2017 solo outing ‘Tourist In This Town’. On the ensuing ‘Wasteland’, Katie throws some laconic alt-country grit at a refrain every bit as intriguing as the one that came before it.

Snocaps will play some shows before the year is out and then disappear, maybe for good. In many ways, that’d be the perfect ending to this particular chapter in the Crutchfields’ story. They have built a rep in modern indie-rock – both together and apart – that affords them this sort of diversion, like R.E.M. backing Warren Zevon for a few months in the mid-’80s or Kim Deal making ‘Pacer’ with the Amps instead of kicking on with the Breeders. Part of this brilliant record’s charm is its potential to be a low-stakes, high-quality one-off – a curio waiting to be discovered somewhere along the way.

Details

• Record label: Anti-
• Release date: October 31, 2025
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