Allison and Katie Crutchfield don’t stop moving on Snocaps

Having a twin helped – someone to turn to, to form a pact with: us against the world. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, they sought escape from their quietly oppressive surroundings through punk, wailing in their parents’ garage until they graduated to local venues like Cave 9, the city’s former nonprofit punk institution. There, their defiant spirit took shape, pushing back against the hegemonic weight of predominantly cis-male spaces. That energy soon crystallized into their first success: P.S. Eliot.

P.S. Eliot became a paragon of pop punk, earning critical acclaim and local celebrity in Birmingham and beyond. But after two LPs, the sisters sensed an end – not from bitterness, but because the project had run its course. Katie went on to form Waxahatchee; Allison started Swearin’. Though they took separate paths, they continued crossing over into each other’s bands. After Swearin’ split in 2015, Allison briefly pursued a solo career before shifting to A&R at Katie’s label, ANTI-. Katie, meanwhile, broke out with Cerulean Salt and Saint Cloud, albums that unearthed a confessional, country-tinged voice during her recent seven years of sobriety. Punk still underpins her work – if now more quietly – alongside influences like Lucinda Williams, Townes Van Zandt,
and Emmylou Harris.

Seeking to return to that garage and rekindle their youthful spark, the Crutchfields traded songs for a year before reuniting as Snocaps. This time, Katie brought new friends. North Carolina producer and multi-instrumentalist Brad Cook – her closest collaborator on Saint Cloud (2020) and Grammy nominated Tiger’s Blood (2024) – served as the steady hand, in the past a touchstone for Katie when things felt uncertain. Also along was indie rock wild card MJ Lenderman, whose guitar work lit up much of Tiger’s Blood. Together, the four recorded the self-titled record in just one week.

On the record, Allison retains her gift for inter-verse inflection, adding melodic colour and surprise to elongated lines or clipped, declarative prose – most striking on “Coast” and “You in Rehab”. She sings with assured confidence, then slips into catchy choruses that nod back to the sisters’ P.S. Eliot days. Katie, by contrast, is the more reserved twin – speculative and ever the master of syntactic variation. Her verses generate their own rhythmic momentum through thoughtful enjambment, melting into one another to form a lyrical quilt stitched with sensory detail. That texture blankets the listener before grounding itself again in the choruses, where Allison’s harmonies re-enter the fold.

The two trade leads early on: Allison fronts the first two tracks (“Coast” and “Heathcliff”) with pop-punk vigour, while Katie joins with the more Americana-infused “Wasteland.” Lenderman, aside from striking interludes on “Coast” and deft weaving through “Wasteland”, doesn’t fully emerge until mid-album, where the record leans toward power pop (“Brand New City”, “Avalanche”, “Doom”) yet still flashes with Americana intensity.

“Hide” stands out in particular. Lenderman’s guitar ripples and feeds back as Katie contemplates an ambiguous, half-vanished love (“Our love is third degree / Our love’s a broken key / Our love is stuck in the / Back door of my faded memory”). Each chorus turns inward, acknowledging mutual concealment, while Allison’s voice cuts through as the intuitive counterpoint – a heart of hearts whispering truth against desire.

“I Don’t Want To” feels like a sunset to the record; it’s as if we’re back on their childhood kitchen floor, Allison and Katie with two acoustic guitars, harmonizing and sharing one last look of relief after lamenting youthful directionlessness and past mistakes (“Run fast with no direction / I’ve spilled out heavy with no direction”).

The album closes with a surprising reprise, “Coast II”, sung by Lola, Allison’s daughter. It resonates in a way that feels suspended between eras – as if it could be a demo Allison recorded long ago or something Lola is singing now – there’s a duality that gives it quiet power.

Whether in cars barreling down familiar highways, walking bookmarked by civic landmarks, or evading the company of men for each other (“Don’t bother chasing us boys / We’ll see ourselves out”), the Crutchfields are always moving. Their connection feels less like a partnership, more like correspondence – something in motion, exchanged but never fully revealed.