FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Dorsa for RollingStone.com
Part Twenty-Seven: Waxahatchee
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IN this edition of Modern Heroines…
PHOTO CREDIT: Adela Loconte/REX/Shutterstock
I want to discuss one of my favourite artists around, Waxahatchee. Even though Katie Crutchfield is backed by a band (and Waxahatchee is sort of a band name), she leads the project and is the figurehead. On 2020’s stunning Saint Cloud (which I shall talk about soon), she was supported by Brad Cook – bass, acoustic guitar, piano, keyboards, synthesizer, Bobby Colombo – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, Bill Lennox – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, percussion, vocals, Nick Kinsey - drums, percussion in addition to Josh Kaufman – electric guitar, piano, organ, percussion. I love Crutchfield’s music, and I think she is one of the most incredible performers and songwriters in the world. I am going to end with a playlist combining songs from all of her five studio albums but, as Saint Cloud is her most-recent album, I am going to focus on that. It was one of last year’s finest albums. I think it is the strongest album that Waxahatchee has produced – that is saying something, as the back catalogue is pretty impressive! I am keen to bring in some interviews but, first, a couple of reviews for Saint Cloud. When they investigated the album, this is what AllMusic wrote:
“Following the defiant alt-rock of her John Agnello-produced fourth album, Out in the Storm, Katie Crutchfield makes another adjustment to the course of her one-time bedroom project Waxahatchee with the warmer, more contemplative Saint Cloud. Shedding distortion in favor of a more easygoing, country-rock sensibility, the album's backing band is perhaps the best indicator of its sound; joining her throughout are Bonny Doon's Bill Lennox and Bobby Colombo, Bonny Light Horseman's Josh Kaufman, and Elvis Perkins in Dearland's Nick Kinsey. Saint Cloud's cover art underscores the approach with a photo of Crutchfield striking a pose on a pickup truck.
Per press surrounding the album, the songs were written after and largely inspired by the songwriter's decision to get sober. A native of Alabama, her relaxed vocal twang is most pronounced on tracks including the slow, lilting "Ruby Falls" and the jauntier "Can't Do Much." Elsewhere, "Lilacs" straddles urgency and relaxed composure with ambling guitar jangle and lyrics about letting go of bad behavior patterns. Hints of Dylan can be detected throughout the album but are more prominent on "Hell" and, to a lesser degree, the chorus of "War," an uptempo entry that assures "I'm in a war with myself/It's got nothing to do with you." While alternating between regretful slower tracks, midtempo drawls, and livelier, foot-tapping fare, the album never moves off dirt roads and adjacent orchards, and proves to be her most carefree-sounding effort to date. That's despite doggedly self-examining lyrics that keep Saint Cloud squarely in the realm of prior releases from an artist who continues to ward off complacency”.
It is striking that Saint Cloud was inspired by Crutchfield’s struggles with alcoholism - which came to a fore during the promotional tour for Waxahatchee's Out in the Storm (2017). Saint Cloud can be a sobering listen but, more than anything, it is a beautiful record that is very heartfelt and personal. If you have not heard the album then go and check it out today, as you do not really need to know about Waxahatchee’s recording and personal history to appreciate it.
The second (and final) review I want to source from is from Pitchfork. They were full of love and praise for Saint Cloud:
“Because Saint Cloud is so fresh and budding on the outside, Crutchfield can hide her anger and fear inside it. This new contrast gives great dimension to her storytelling, allowing all the sourness and rot at the fringes of her songs to come and go at will. “War” takes on a rambling ’60s Dylan feel, that lets her talk about how she’s prone to “come in hot” and “fill up the room,” but she’s quick to add—as we all do in heated moments—that it has “nothing to do with you.” The trauma buried at the heart of “Arkadelphia” is so palpable that the slow-burn tempo makes it glow white. She sings softly, “If we make pleasant conversation/I hope you can’t see what’s burning in me.” Crutchfield is still the patron saint of emotional chaos, but her songs suggest that she’s becoming more of a protector, a homebody, looking to take everything out of storage and either throw it away or keep it safe in a home.
The climax of the record, “Ruby Falls,” is where all of the ambition and aesthetics come together. As she walks down 7th Street in Manhattan, Crutchfield’s wisdom collects into buckets: “Real love don’t follow a straight line/It breaks your neck, it builds you a delicate shrine,” and, “You might mourn all that you wasted/That’s just part of the haul.” Her pen moves ornately across the page, the aperture of her songwriting flies open. The unsparing indie style of Chan Marshall or Liz Phair remains, but Saint Cloud is something far bigger. It isn’t just talking to Lucinda Williams’ 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, it pulls up right beside it, a vivid modern classic of folk and Americana. It’s a record that suggests maybe if you slow down, life slows down with you, and everything is in bloom”.
I am not going to go back to the debut Waxahatchee album, American Weekend, of 2012, but I have assembled some key cuts in the playlist at the very end. I want to bring in an interview with The Guardian first. They provided us some background about Katie Crutchfield and collaboration with her sister, Alison:
“Crutchfield is the product of a fairly conventional white, southern, middle-class upbringing. When we pass the Alabama theatre, she notes that the historic movie palace once hosted a production of the Nutcracker in which she, her twin Allison and their younger sister tap-danced. The classic rock and country in the Crutchfield household fitted the atmosphere of an industrial city in the American deep south that had absorbed generations of formerly rural people and spilled into tree-lined suburbs. Crutchfield has fond recollections of the family going to see Shania Twain dazzle an arena.
As teenagers, Katie and Allison shared the urge to rebel. They quit tap-dancing, swore off country music and used file-sharing to enable their developing tastes for grunge, the British invasion, indie, punk and riot grrrl. They made music in the basement, Katie as singer-guitarist and Allison on drums. Katie wryly admits she was “struggling with my country music past. I was like, ‘That’s my parents’ music. I don’t care. I like Bikini Kill.’”
In a scene teeming with boys who preferred hardcore, she stood out singing Velvet Underground covers at all-ages club Cave 9, in the twins’ first band, the Ackleys. “How did I end up like that?” she marvels as she drives. “It wasn’t really set up for me to do that. A lot of this stuff is even more meaningful to me now, because there were a lot of things that feel a little happenstance.”
Eventually, she and Allison left Birmingham in search of a new scene, trying New York before settling in a house full of musicians, including other members of Allison’s band Swearin’, in Philadelphia. Katie’s solo project took shape when she went to write at the family’s rustic retreat in Alabama. She borrowed the name of nearby Waxahatchee Creek and collected her songs on 2012’s American Weekend, an album spiky and revealing in spirit but lo-fi in execution. It landed her at the vanguard of an acclaimed new wave of singer-songwriters bringing hushed intensity and emotional specificity to indie rock: Julien Baker, Mitski, Torres, Soccer Mommy and more.
On subsequent Waxahatchee releases, she added sinew to her sound, always with musical contributions from Allison. She continued writing with a nerviness that felt uncomfortably unfiltered. (“And I will visualise a tragedy / And blame you for it.”) She noticed how it was sometimes interpreted like a literal transcription of a diary as opposed to consciously hiselled expression. “For so long, my music was always described as confessional,” she says. “That felt really gendered to me. I always felt that implies that there is no thought or art. Everything I ever write is thought through and laboured over”.
I am a fan of all the five Waxahatchee albums, but there was a notable shift between Out of the Storm in 2017 and Saint Cloud. The second interview I want to introduce is from PASTE, where we find out about the input of producer Brad Cook on Saint Cloud, in addition to discovering this is the first album where Crutchfield was working without her sister:
“For this album, Crutchfield brought on producer Brad Cook, who also worked on her Great Thunder EP. They make for a fruitful pair. “He feels like my family now,” Crutchfield says. “Producers, a lot of the time, really want to put their creative stamp on things. That is an important part of that job—being able to do that and knowing when to do that. But Brad really isn’t that way. He paid very close attention to what I was doing, what was organically happening with the songs, and then was making the band do the same. Like ‘Let’s watch Katie, let’s see what’s happening with this song organically, and let’s build around that rather than chopping things up,’ which is something that’s happened to me in the past.”
However, Crutchfield’s actual familial music connection—Allison, who has contributed to Waxahatchee albums in the past and also records as a solo artist and with her band Swearin’—wasn’t really involved in the process this time around.
“This is my first record that I don’t have my training wheels,” Crutchfield says. “I’m kind of out there riding alone, and it was positive for me to be able to do that. And obviously she’s my best friend and always will be. But we grow and evolve constantly, and our involvement with each other’s music goes through waves.”
Some Saint Cloud songs, like the vivid “Fire,” took shape on the road (during a sunset ride over the Mississippi River bridge between Memphis and Arkansas’ West Memphis, “on fire in the light of day,” to be exact), while others came together with a little inspiration from rootsy Michigan group Bonny Doon, who played as Waxahatchee’s backing band on her last tour. She says some lyrics were more laborious to come by, but her “process is more or less the same even though it’s evolved ever so slightly.” Half the time, these songs sound like very personal prayers, while the other half, they’re more like perky poems meant to be heard by the masses. “Lilacs” likens human processes to the growth and death of budding flowers. “Arkadelphia,” in a rhythm that recalls the peak ’90s radio country that Crutchfield’s parents played for her growing up in Alabama, traces a backroads journey, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road-style, that ends with her watching a toddler run around the yard. “Ruby Falls” points out that “real love doesn’t follow a straight line.” The heart of it all is so undeniably country—while still a Katie Crutchfield original”.
I do think that Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield is a modern icon and one of those songwriters who will inspire generations to come. She is an incredible artist and, hitting a new peak on Saint Cloud, it makes me wonder where she might head next. I want to finish with an interview from Vogue. We find out how Crutchfield was dealing with COVID-19 (the interview is from March 2020) – we also get insight into the influences behind Saint Cloud:
“My first reaction was grief,” says Katie Crutchfield, 31, the Alabama-born indie artist who records under the name Waxahatchee, and whose new album, the gloriously languid and sunlit homage to classic Americana titled Saint Cloud (Merge) has the dubious honor of coming out today, at a moment of national fear, isolation, and crisis. The realization, Crutchfield says, hit about two weeks ago—that COVID-19 would prevent her and her band from touring to support Saint Cloud, touring being the way independent artists like Crutchfield connect meaningfully with their fans (and earn most of their living).
“I felt that grief for about 24 hours, and then very quickly I just sort of accepted that this is going to change things—not just for me, but for every single person,” Crutchfield says. “Then I had a big feeling of gratitude. People need music now more than ever, and as far as music in the Waxahatchee canon goes, Saint Cloud is my most hopeful album. It’s the most warm and hopeful music I’ve ever made.”
“I’m struck by your vocals on Saint Cloud. You’ve never sung with quite so much range.
Thank you! The sound of Saint Cloud sort of followed my voice. And I think with every album I get more vocally confident. A lot of my favorite singers are women, and their voices always sound better in their 30s and 40s. I was listening to a lot of Fiona Apple and a lot of SZA—Ctrl was one of my favorite albums that has come out in a long time. I was singing along to that record just trying to follow her, and I realized that my voice could move in ways I don’t really let it very often.
Tell me how you came to the classic Americana sounds that are all over Saint Cloud. I know Lucinda Williams is a touchstone for you…
I’ve loved Lucinda Williams forever, across many years. And there are Lucinda moments on other records, but I have this memory of when Out in the Storm was about to be announced, starting to make a turn toward Americana and more roots-y music, getting into classic country and stuff like that, which put me in a weird head space when I went out to tour. There’s so much rock on Out in the Storm and quietly I was longing to make a change.
“That message right now is important—that we all have to jump in to the unknown and find some kind of lightness in that.”
Your lyrics suggest you’re in a more peaceful place than on your earlier records. I’m thinking of the lines on “Fire” about being “wiser and slow and attuned” and learning “to see with a partial view.” You’re 31 now. Do you feel wiser?
I think so, through sobriety—those lyrics are about that. Accepting that there is a power greater than myself, and that I can’t control everything and I can’t see everything in the universe and you just have to submit to it all. To me, that message right now is important—that we all have to jump in to the unknown and find some kind of lightness in that”.
I shall finish it there but, in a busy and packed year for music, one of 2020’s best came in the form of Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud. It is a remarkable album and, looking ahead, I wonder where Crutchfield will take her music. Check out her incredible albums and immerse yourself in one of the greatest artists we have in the world right now. Let’s hope that she gets to tour this year and there is an opportunity to bring some Saint Cloud songs to the people – I am sure she is keen to go! I shall leave it there but, for this part of Modern Heroines, I was very excited to feature Waxahatchee. If you have not discovered Katie Crutchfield’s incredible music, then do so, as she is a…
TRULY tremendous artist.