Snocaps

Katie and Allison Crutchfield were only 15 years old when their first band, The Ackleys, played their first show. The twins were obsessive about songwriting, forsaking other hobbies to “put everything into making music,” as Katie once described it. It paid off: Their grungey rock band earned them local buzz in Birmingham, Alabama, and the group they formed next, P.S. Eliot, embraced a feminist perspective and found fans across the country. The sisters briefly formed another project, but by then, they had started making their names apart from one another: Katie as Waxahatchee, and Allison in Swearin’ (and later, as a solo artist).

Each sister has developed her own voice while working independently: Katie’s last two albums have been critically adored and gained her a reputation as a generational songwriter (one also netted her a Grammy nomination); Allison kept one foot in the DIY punk world with Swearin’, and after that band broke up (and briefly reunited), she found a second career in A&R at a record label. But it’s been a long time since the two have collaborated on new music. So when a couple weeks ago, the sisters—now 36—posted identical posed photos on their social media accounts (then, video clips of the two of them hanging out and playing music) the prospect of their reunion felt quietly thrilling.

Katie and Allison were teasing their new project, Snocaps, and its debut self-titled album. They made the record alongside two of Katie’s recent collaborators, Brad Cook and MJ Lenderman. Cook’s careful production and Lenderman’s laconic, slyly brilliant guitar playing threads throughout the record, giving it a more laidback tone than the sister’s urgent early collaborations. But even with these new additions, Katie and Allison’s connection is still at the heart of the record, and Snocaps is a return to form, its sound landing closer to the ramshackle pop-punk of P.S. Eliot than Saint Cloud’s twilit majesty.

The record is split equally between the two sisters, with each writing and taking lead vocals for half the songs. They frequently sing in harmony, their voices blending to produce a kind of magic that seems unique to sibling pairs. Katie and Allison aren’t just identical twins but mirror twins; the term comes to mind when hearing their voices—nearly indistinguishable but flecked with individuality—singing together. Allison’s songs—like “Over Our Heads,” all rollicking percussion and sunny riffs—lean toward bouncy indie rock. Katie’s make fruitful use of her newer songwriting habits: Her syncopated cadence on “Wasteland” and the triumphant twang of “Cherry Hard Candy” make the songs feel like they could be demos for last year’s Tigers Blood. But some tracks hark back to her past: The forlorn and minimal “I Don’t Want To” sounds unguarded compared to the artful poise of her recent releases, a reminder of the directness and vulnerability that made her early records such a revelation.

Both Katie and Allison can be skilled profilers of the moments when introspection verges on action, or the ways too much self-interrogation can paralyze us. But these are songs that refuse to be pinned down, with lyrics about having “the pedal to the floor,” driving down any number of numbered roads—“22,” “40 East,” “29th”—or taking “a walk down Sunset.” (This comprises another throughline from their earlier collaborations, filled with songs of restless searching: “I’ve got a racing mind and enough gas to get to Tennessee,” Katie sang on P.S. Eliot’s first album; “Planes and trains and 95 straight up” on their second.)

These are also songs of tangled relationships and messy self-regard, common themes for both songwriters. Katie has been forthright about her experience with addiction and sobriety; in a long, moving profile published earlier this year, she spoke at length about her and Allison’s relationship with the youngest Crutchfield sister, who also struggles with addiction. These lyrics seem animated by questions of care and codependency, too: “When you go down,” they sing on “Heathcliff, “You’ll take me down with you”; or later, on “Wasteland,” Katie sings of a “willful bottom line,” of abandoned “lines in the sand.” More explicitly, the album’s last full song is called “You in Rehab.” “Can’t imagine you getting better,” Allison sings, “But I never give up.” The song’s pop-punk buoyancy betrays its heartbreaking premise: “I watch myself split in two,” she sings, “One loves me/And the other loves you.” Seen through the light of this shared struggle, it’s especially moving to hear Katie and Allison backing each other up here.

Since their last album-length collaboration, Katie and Allison Crutchfield have worked with scores of different artists, lived in different cities, triumphed over personal difficulties—but likely, many of the same challenges of love and relationships and family and identity still persist. There’s something therapeutic, then, about hearing them return to each other on a record that sounds genuinely fun, even as they continue probing these core questions. “When Katie and I feel really inspired by something,” Allison once said, “we can build each other up in this way where we have complete courage in ourselves and complete confidence.” As young songwriters, those qualities made them sound brash and fearless. But here, their candor sounds hard-earned and their uncertainty feels honest. Above all, they sound rooted: ready to head out in their own directions, confident of what they’ll find when they come back home again.