Allison Crutchfield

Before finishing high school, Allison Crutchfield had already built a reputation inside the independent music underground as a vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist whose work in several respected bands paved the way for her later solo recordings. She and her identical twin, Katie Crutchfield, entered the world on January 4, 1989, in Birmingham, Alabama, where an early shared love of music prompted them at age fifteen to start the Ackleys, with Allison playing keyboards and Katie handling guitar. The group’s buoyant brand of indie rock attracted a committed regional audience and established both sisters as regulars in the Southern DIY network until the band dissolved in 2007.

Soon afterward the sisters began P.S. Eliot, again dividing instrumental roles so that Allison played drums while Katie played guitar. The new project favored brooding, intensely felt songs that shifted between punk and indie pop; it issued two albums, Introverted Romance in Our Troubled Minds in 2009 and Sadie in 2011, before the members parted company late in 2011, not long after settling in Brooklyn, New York. Don Giovanni Records later issued the anthology 2007-2011 in 2016.

A short-lived stint in Bad Banana followed, after which Katie started her own band, Waxahatchee. Allison responded by forming Swearin’, taking guitar and vocal duties herself and recruiting Kyle Gilbride on guitar, Keith Spencer on bass, and Jeff Bolt on drums. The quartet debuted with the 2011 EP What a Dump and released two albums, Swearin’ in 2012 and Surfing Strange in 2013, before a romantic relationship between Allison and Kyle ended and took the band with it.

While Swearin’ was winding down in 2014, Allison issued her first solo recording, the seven-song EP Lean in to It. In 2016 she and Katie briefly revived P.S. Eliot for a short tour supporting the 2007-2011 collection; that same year she signed with Merge Records and began work on her first full-length solo album, Tourist in This Town, which appeared in January 2017.