As the sparing press release informs, the record is a one-off team-up under a name that will be “put on ice” after some shows this year, so don’t get used to Snocaps being around. For now, the melodies herein are to be cherished as sweet, sharp hits of DIY indie-rock made all the more treasurable by the built-in limitations of their shelf life.
For the Crutchfields, collaboration is not new territory, although a new record made together has been some time coming. They played together years ago under the names the Ackleys and P.S. Eliot, before Katie became Waxahatchee, a vehicle for a piercing lyrical sensibility that has ranged from breakthrough indie records like career-best Out In The Storm to the later Americana heights of Saint Cloud and Tigers Blood.
For her part, Allison formed hooky indie-punk band Swearin’, went solo and played intermittently on Waxahatchee records and tours. So, one’s a little bit country these days, the other is indie rock’n’roll. And Snocaps emerges as a seamless, almost destined-sounding re-alignment of both for songs that seem to touch on themes of distance, connection and the complexities in between.
Autobiographical readings are always questionable, of course, although Katie is no stranger to emotional self-anatomisation and there’s little ambiguity about the chemistry that seems to drive the duo’s combined melodic/lyrical sensibilities.
Opener Coast issues its lo-fi hit of languid alt-rock with immediacy and charm, such that you can almost miss the deepening tale mapped out in the lyrics. “I’m sorry that we ever stopped hanging out” might be a hint about a family dynamic, a friendship or a romantic relationship, but however you cut it the balance of breezy melodicism to self-dissection is adroitly struck.
Heathcliff includes due references to waiting around at a window for someone, before the words detail a push-pull bond in the contrast between “I don’t think about us” and “I’m working your name into every other sentence”. At any rate, the vibrant chorus (“When you go down, you take me down with you”) suggests with tuneful assurance that certain pairings will always be there to be returned to, through the highs and lows.
True, tangible contrasts in their approaches to singing emerge, with Katie’s voice often soaring above the backdrop and Allison’s delivery more often immersed in the arrangements. Yet when they harmonise, as on supremely confident album standout Wasteland, they sound innately simpatico.
Elsewhere, Snocaps make light work of classicist indie-rock on Brand New City, keen introspection on the Out In The Storm-ish on Hide and driving radio-rock on Over Our Heads. Angel Wings sounds like one of Katie’s finest songs of regret and self-recrimination, buoyed up by an infectious melody, before the record comes to an affecting head on You In Rehab. Allison’s reference to Katie’s struggles with alcohol preceding Saint Cloud, perhaps? Either way, a sense of empathy, compassion and close-knit care rings out on a song that seems to hint at unbreakable bonds. As reprise closer Coast II brings the album full circle,
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