Sunday Music: "Coast" By Snocaps + Sonic Hydras

In the 90s, when you wanted to be alternative, but everything started being labeled alternative, any internal sense of rebellion got inherently confusing. So, somewhere within rebelling against alt-rock and punk bands, I found myself deeper into a world of backpack rap and - the purpose of this rant - alt-country,

I’d already embraced my love for Johnny Cash thanks to a “Boy Named Sue” 45 my mom had that eventually led me to the rest of his catalog and more, which I was also sore about when the movie got so big, but that's another post

But in the 90s there were all sorts of cool bands like Whiskeytown, the Old 97s, and of course, my personal favorite: Uncle Tupelo. I was mostly discovering these in the mid to late 90s through record store hunting, for the record, which meant I found them in the actual order they happened, even if I was catching up a few years later.

Uncle Tupelo were sad and exciting and grungy and sloppy and everything that felt great except for when you’d play it for friends or a girl or anybody, really, and they’d want to listen to Blink 182 or Pearl Jam or that Biggie song.

So I was pretty comfortable with it being a weird side interest thing I mostly kept to myself.

Uncle Tupelo split in the mid-90s and something even cooler happened.

Cool in the way stuff happened before the internet was everywhere.

A few quiet years seemed to have gone by since they split, when this new band Wilco showed up. I did the, “Doesn’t that kind of sound like one of the Uncle Tupelo guys” thing. It wasn’t planned. I didn’t follow their personal development on social media. It just happened and after asking the question I was delighted to find out I was right.

And then it happened again. Because once is cool but twice is amazing. I heard a Son Volt song and had my, “Oh wait, the other guy is here” moment.

I had one band I loved and then I got 3. Like a hydra. Just - greatness springing up all over the place, organically.

The love levels did vary, especially over time, but I always appreciated that multiplier and how it came out of those friendships. It’s rare. But it’s really exciting when it works.

That’s a long way for me to say I got REAL excited when I heard this song “Coast” by Snocaps last week.

I knew that voice right away. That’s a Katie Crutchfield thing. I love my Waxahatchee. I even have a soft spot for when I stumbled into her catalog and found P.S. Eliot. That band featured Katie and her sister Allison doing some wonderfully shoe-gazy if not slightly mopey pop punk for the mid 2000s.

P.S. Eliot didn’t last though, and while Katie went off to do Waxahatchee, Allison went to form Swearin’. I featured Swearin' on a 2018 playlist and really dug their records. Waxahatchee's all over my old playlists/Sunday Music’s too.

My wife lovingly calls this my teenage girl music. That’s fine. It’s accurate.

So I’m listening to Snocaps and hearing it, I immediately caught that P.S. Eliot + Swearin’ vibe alongside the immediately recognizable Katie voice. Then I realized why. Allison was there too. It’s a family affair (cool!).

But then there was another element I stumbled on. And, thanks to the internet being the internet, I pulled up the lineup to look at the ways the guitars had a different flavor of their folk-punkiness and found out MJ Lenderman is there too.

Alright. This might not yet be as cool as what Jeff Tweedy has gone on to do, but Katie is working some special voodoo on things right now. Maybe she’ll be the next Tweedy. I could see that. I would be totally behind that.

More sonic hydras, please.

Seeing people grow apart and grow back together in all new ways - it can be so rewarding. Try the new Snocaps for yourself. I am loving this blend of all their influences and I can swear you can hear them subversively smiling while they’re playing this stuff.

Is this a single…?