Indie music fans were gifted an unexpected Halloween treat this year. At midnight on All Hallows’ Eve, a surprise album by the new indie rock supergroup Snocaps dropped on streaming platforms.
Snocaps’ members — Waxahatchee mastermind Katie Crutchfield, her sister and former P.S. Eliot bandmate Allison, Asheville, North Carolina rock phenom MJ Lenderman and producer Brad Cook — had cryptically posted Polaroid photos together earlier in the month, leading to speculation of a potential collaboration, but a full album was a welcome surprise.
Snocaps’ self-titled record runs just over half an hour across 13 brief songs. Fans of Waxahatchee and Lenderman’s signature Americana sounds may be disappointed, as there’s little in the way of twangy vocals or keening steel guitars in Snocaps’ offering.
It’s also very much not an MJ Lenderman-forward project. His contributions are entirely instrumental, encompassing guitar on all tracks and drums and bass on a select few. This is primarily a Crutchfield sisters album, conceived during the recording of Waxahatchee’s “Tigers Blood” and recorded in a week.
Each sister takes on lead vocal duties for about half of the album’s songs. Their voices naturally have a familial resemblance, but are also distinct enough that their songs have distinct character and their vocal harmonies are rich.
Sonically, “Snocaps” is a fine synthesis of very 2010s-feeling indie rock, like the kind the Crutchfields made as P.S. Eliot, with the more recent Southern indie resurgence spearheaded by Waxahatchee, Lenderman and Wednesday, of which Lenderman is a recording member.
The album, as with all MJ Lenderman releases, has a connection, however slight, to Clemson. Lenderman played at various Clemson house venues during the lead-up to and tour for his 2019 debut album, and Wednesday performed at the South Carolina Botanical Gardens in 2022, shortly before their album “Rat Saw God” became one of the most acclaimed indie-rock releases of the 2020s.
While those shows were before my time at Clemson, I can’t help but feel some level of local pride when I see how far Lenderman has come since playing in a friend-of-a-friend’s living room.
While chances to see Lenderman in living rooms are few and far between these days, Snocaps has promised a tour in support of this album, which will commence sometime next year. The album will also be released on physical formats next year, with LPs and CDs available for preorder, expected to ship in April.
