The track passes like mailboxes in a rearview, scored by percolating rhythm guitar and a slow, easy tambourine that slaps the passing time.
#Waxahatchee elsewhere free
On “Arkadelphia,” she sings, “If we luck out, free as the air/With an unrest craving to spill everywhere/We’ll weigh what’s good and get real old/Keep driving straight searching for a heart of gold.” Where in the past, her lyrics searched for love and reason, on Saint Cloud, Crutchfield searches for the answers within, like someone who spent the turn of their third decade reckoning with the questions that cannot be answered. Though the album precluded the pandemic, it evokes a prophetically similar sense of quiet reflection. There’s a new maturity in Crutchfield that allows her to embrace the stillness and “spin silence into gold.” In the absence of motion, she observes the cyclical nature of things: the way the lilacs grow and die, or the way a feeling can come and pass. Crutchfield’s voice is front and center in the mix, describing the fresh cut flowers in the old Topo Chico bottles that sit on top of her piano. Panned guitars call back and forth as if bouncing off the walls. Track four, “ Lilacs,” is a song that sits spread out in your speakers like a wide open room. She is no longer howling her truth to the world now, she is confiding in a close friend. She muses on themes of love and sobriety from the vantage of her piano bench or through the frame of a car window. But on Saint Cloud, Crutchfield finds shelter. “I’m raw like wire/ electrified,” she sang on “ Silver,” the track from which her fourth album got its name. On her previous album, 2017′s Out In the Storm, Crutchfield was writing through the flood - the late twenties late nights that turn into shivering sunrises. In the last few years, Crutchfield got sober, moved to Kansas City and settled into her longtime love with fellow singer-songwriter Kevin Morby. The sonic shift came in tandem with a personal one. Saint Cloud brings to mind albums like Lucinda Williams’ World Without Tears or Gillian Welch’s Soul Journey. It exists in a room somewhere between the heartsick swinging country of the late sixties and the gut-punching folk rock of the early 2000s. Produced by trusted indie-rock tastemaker Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger), the album recalls the comfort of classic southern singing and songwriting. On Saint Cloud, the punch of gritty electric guitars that once defined her sound melts into pounding muted piano lines, soft thick-stringed acoustics and chorus-heavy electric guitars. She leaves behind the grunge of her past projects like 2012′s American Weekend or her 2013 follow-up Cerulean Salt and shifts toward a sound inspired by her heroes: think Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynette, and Loretta Lynn. The album Saint Cloud is a sonic return to roots for the Alabama born singer-songwriter Waxahatchee (Katie Crutchfield). The trio was joined by bassist Eliana Athayde (Jacaranda, Weyes Blood) who effortlessly locked in, chiming in with high harmonies throughout. Bill Lennox, Bobby Colombo, and Jake Kmiecik of the indie rock band Bonny Doon provided their signature shimmering guitars and soft pocket drums. Veteran sound engineer Amy Fort (Big Thief, Andy Shauf, Snail Mail) and backline tech Matt LaRocca had the outdoor stage sound dialed in, and the band sounded like they’d been playing together for years. If you closed your eyes, you might’ve wondered whether it was just the record playing. “I want you/All the time/Sanity/Nullify,” she sang, her voice skipping airy octaves. She sang with disarming candor, her frank lyrics wrapped up in a poetry that allowed the listener to make them their own. She was a humble force, avoiding banter as she tuned patiently between songs and speaking only to give thanks or shift praise to the musicians playing with her. Crutchfield was at ease on stage, never missing a note or pushing the tempo, as if the year of stillness infused the songs right into her soul. In the audience, the same breeze powdered boots with dust, and just as soon as you would drift off into the hypnotic warm fuzz of the stereo guitars, her voice, like a bell, pierced through to bring you back. It felt right for an album that sounds like a slow and warm southern summer to be played under the desert stars, the breeze rustling on and off through the collar of Crutchfield’s peasant dress.
Nearly a year and a half later, her live show was worth the wait.
In March of 2020, Crutchfield released her fifth studio album Saint Cloud to glowing critical reception, but was forced to postpone her tour as venues across the world shuttered for the pandemic. “We didn’t get to tour it in a timely manner, so we’re making up for lost time,” Waxahatchee front woman Katie Crutchfield said with a warm smile to the sold-out crowd at Pappy & Harriet’s Saturday, September 25.
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