The twins Katie and Allison Crutchfield, from Birmingham, Alabama, already had a good repertoire of autograph songs at just fifteen years old, developed together with their classmates. High School Michael McClellan and Carter Wilson. An energetic nineties college-rock, halfway between indie-pop and power punk, indebted to female bands such as Belly and Breeders. Katie sings and plays guitar, Allison takes care of keyboards. They quickly take root in the scene DIY local, under the name of Ackleys, thanks to the album “The Ackleys” (2005) and the EP “Forget Forget, Derive Derive” (2006), demonstrating considerable potential. But when the other members of the group enroll in different colleges, the band finds itself unable to continue on its path.
However, the experience will not be lost: the stubborn twins, with an already very well-defined idea in their heads, within a few weeks are back on track with the evolution of that primordial cocoon. In 2007 the legacy of the Ackleys germinated in PS Eliot: Katie sings and plays the guitar, while Allison starts from the keyboards and moves to the drums. The songwriting is perfected, remaining however circumscribed in the bed of pop songs strongly tinged with punk attitude. The debut came in 2008 with “The Bike Wreck Demo”, which was followed by two albums, “Introverted Romance In Our Troubled Minds” in 2009 and “Sadie” in 2011, their best, interspersed with the EP “Living In Squalor”. The sound remains strongly influenced by the typical college-rock of the nineties, worth listening to “Untitled”, a song taken from “Sadie”.
Failing to see further possibilities for improvement, however, the dissolution comes – early – motivated by the mutual need, especially on the part of the two sisters, to take different and more personal paths. Before separating, they released “Demonstration”, a collection of fifteen, on their Bandcamp page demohome versions of already released songs. In 2016, “Anthology 2007-2011” will be released posthumously, a very complete collection of all existing knowledge under the name PS Eliot, including alternative versions and demofor a total of fifty tracks: an essential compendium for anyone who wants to delve deeper into the journey of the still very young Crutchfield twins. All PS Eliot's works, as well as all those of the Ackleys, can still be found on the main music streaming platforms.
Katie and Allison, in parallel with PS Eliot, satisfied their compositional bulimia also through the ephemeral Bad Banana experience, an essential quartet of which the home recordings remain, very lo-ficontained in the album “Crushfield” (2010) and in the subsequent EP “Cry About It” (2011). Meanwhile the sisters leave their native Birmingham, looking for new stimuli and opportunities. They move first to Philadelphia, and then to Brooklyn, because that's where, in the art world, things happen. And they will really happen, with Katie finding her place among the most authoritative voices of the new one American under the stage name Waxahatchee, and Allison starred in Swearin', as well as a semi-hidden solo career, before landing a job as an A&R at a record label.
Years pass and on Halloween 2025, without any warning, “Snocaps” arrives, the eponymous debut album of the new project signed by the Crutchfield twins, who for the occasion welcome on board MJ Lenderman, the guitarist of Wednesday (now also the appreciated leader of his own band) and the producer Brad Cook, who has already collaborated with Katie several times. There are twelve tracks (plus a short one reprise final) country-pop through which the twins offer a compendium of their shared past.
In the new songs Katie and Allison always maintain a rigorous central role, with Lenderman much more discreet compared to the rides wing Neil Young and Adrift noise to which he has accustomed us, even if his imprint is very evident from the first notes of the initial “Coast”, the piece chosen as a single, for which a promotional video clip was also made.
Katie and Allison split the space equally, confirming a songwriting of the highest level, between stories of escapes in the car and reports of various addictions. The sound is always quite full, with just a couple of songs left at a minimal stage, the meditative “Hide” (which starts like U2's “All I Want Is You”) and “I Dont't Want To”. The component pop oriented is prevalent in tracks like “Heathcliff” and “Wasteland”, “Angel Wings” smells of country roots, a rather jaunty indie rock touch permeates “Brand New City”, “Over Our Heads”, “Doom” and “You In Rehab”, while “Cherry Hard Candy” and “Avalanche” release great sunshine. Crutchfield and Lenderman continually exchange instruments (guitars, bass, drums), naturally, without any song ever losing a shred of effectiveness.
04/11/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
