Snocaps ‘Snocaps’ Review

Blood harmonies: there’s magic in ‘em, literal and figurative — nature and nurture, love and rivalry, atmospheric alchemy born of living room dust and familial mishigas. Blood harmonies alone would be reason enough to cheer the surprise debut of Snocaps — Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and twin sister Allison Crutchfield of Swearin’ and P.S. Eliot, the best-known of their teenaged pop-punk sister acts. Of course, Sister Katie is also coming off two of the decade’s best albums, St. Cloud and Tigers Blood, the latter distinguished by her delicious harmonies with MJ Lenderman (whose electric guitar work is all over this new project, alongside Waxahatchee wingman Brad Cook) and her remarkable songwriting hot-streak.

That streak continues here, but the real delight of this ostensible side project is Allison Crutchfield’s return to the mic after an extended absence, and the rebirth of a sibling rock band, apparently sans fistfights or cricket bats. That means two great songwriters who, one senses here, write a little differently working together than they do separately.

The first release by Snocaps — a band name shared by a tooth-cracking old-school movie theater candy and a kneecapping new-school cannabis product — suggests as much. For one, this feels like a classic indie-rock record, minus the pedal steel and other signifiers that rebranded Waxahatchee as a kind of New South country-rock project. The songwriting’s shared, Katie getting six songs to Allison’s seven, which seems fair — Allison’s last record was Swearin’s fine 2018 Fall into the Sun, so she’s playing catching up, per usual, having come to songwriting a bit later in life than her sister.

“Coast,” which jumps off a discount-store drum-machine pulse, is one of two Allison songs that open the album, and it sets the tone for a song set that lives and bleeds largely on the road, emotions churning as time and miles hurtle by. “22nd is a straight shot south,” she sings, rhyming it with “you finally open your mouth” and confessing “I got the pedal on the floor/ or I’m slamming on the breaks/I could never just coast” — the twins leaning into the last line like a shared secret so foundational it becomes private language. 

It’s the sound of women who’ve spent much of their lives driving from show to show. On “Over Our Heads,” it’s “40 East half past eight,” On “Angel Wings,” the singer narrates: “I ride down 29th/I delight in the spectrum of this yearning.” If you guessed that’s a Katie song, you’d be right, and it certainly could pass for a Waxahatchee track, like others here — “Wasteland” in particular, with Lenderman’s trademark bent-note sparkles on the outro. But Katie’s writing feels punchier, more direct than usual, harking back to records like Cerulean Salt and P.S. Eliot’s Introverted Romance in Our Troubled Minds. See “Cherry Hard Candy,” a mid-tempo chugger that spits clipped couplets breathlessly: “I’m a comet/I am heaven/I’m a wave crashing/I’m on my own/I got money/On our failure/I’m a sinner/I’m forgiving/You got time to kill/And I’m on the phone.” Even ballads like “Hide,” with its simple repeated rhymes, feel streamlined.

Allison, meanwhile, wants mostly to rock. “Brand New City” takes flight like vintage Guided by Voices, a heart full of unsettled hope lofted higher by Lenderman’s chiming 12-string, ditto “Avalanche,” an exultation of falling hard with the guitars partway between the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” and The La’s “There She Goes.” Whatever sibling rivalry exists finds a handsome stalemate in this band, each woman’s songs stronger for the harmonies and tag-team company of the other’s.

There’s certainly no question that Waxahatchee is one of America’s greatest rock bands. But the push and pull of styles here between two artists with different obsessions and skillsets — the mark of so many touchstone bands, sibling acts or otherwise — makes Snocaps an equally-compelling outfit. The sisters’ statement, released with the album, claims they’ll do a few shows in the coming months, at which point the band will be “put on ice for the foreseeable future.” But like the torch-passing reprise of “Coast” that ends this record, their eyes are on the road in front of them. And encouragingly, they leave the door open. Catch ‘em while ya can.