Waxahatchee - An American Trip

The Ackleys: starting out on the high school benches

Born on January 4, 1989 in Birmingham, Alabama, Katie Crutchfield grew up with a deep passion for music, one that took shape as early as her teenage years in her first recording projects. At just fifteen, together with her twin sister Allison, she already had a solid repertoire of original songs, material rehearsed and recorded alongside high school classmates Michael McClellan and Carter Wilson. It was an energetic brand of college-rock, stylistically very much rooted in the '90s, somewhere between indie-pop and power punk, heavily indebted to other female-fronted bands such as Belly and Breeders.

Katie sings and plays guitar, Allison handles the keyboards; despite their very young age, they quickly put down roots in the local DIY scene thanks to a solid run of live shows. The quartet released the album The Ackleys in 2005 and the EP Forget Forget, Derive Derive the following year, on the local label House Of Love, showing — despite the inevitable unevenness typical of their age — considerable potential. But when the other members of the band enrolled in different colleges, the band found itself unable to carry on.

P.S. Eliot: college rock as a family affair

The experience wasn't wasted, though: the strong-willed twins, with a vision already clearly in mind, were back on their feet within a few weeks with the evolution of that early chrysalis. In 2007 the legacy of the Ackleys blossomed in an even more fully realized form in P.S. Eliot: Katie sang and played guitar while Allison moved from keyboards to drums. The songwriting grew more refined, though for the time being it remained confined to the territory of pop songs heavily streaked with punk attitude.

The debut arrived in 2008 with The Bike Wreck Demo, essentially a self-produced CD-R distributed in a still-underground fashion. But before long the band signed to the small independent label Salinas, which would release their two albums, Introverted Romance In Our Troubled Minds in 2009 and Sadie in 2011, their best, with the EP Living In Squalor coming out in between.

The quality of the songwriting is decidedly striking, considering that most of the material was written by kids who were still minors. The sound remains heavily influenced by the typical college rock of the '90s — a good example being "Untitled", a track taken from Sadie.

Unable to see further room for growth, the band broke up early, driven by the mutual need, especially on the part of the two sisters, to pursue different and more personal paths. But before parting ways they released online, on their own Bandcamp page, Demonstration, a collection of fifteen demos, home versions of already-released songs.

In 2016 came the posthumous release of Anthology 2007-2011, an exhaustive collection of everything known to exist under the P.S. Eliot name, including alternate versions and demos, for a total of fifty tracks: an essential compendium for anyone wanting to dig deeper into the early work of the still very young Crutchfield twins. All of P.S. Eliot's releases, as well as all of the Ackleys', can still be found on the major music streaming platforms.

Alongside P.S. Eliot, Katie and Allison also fed their compositional hunger through the short-lived Bad Banana project, a dispensable quartet remembered only for the very lo-fi home recordings collected on the album Crushfield (2010) and the subsequent EP Cry About It (2011).

Meanwhile the sisters left their native Birmingham in search of new stimuli and opportunities. They moved first to Philadelphia, and later to Brooklyn, because that's where things happen in the art world. And they really would happen...

Katie becomes Waxahatchee: the start-up of a solo career

At this point Katie decided to take a step back and opted for a total stripping-down of the arrangements of her new songs. It was a path she had actually already explored back in 2008, when under the pseudonym King Everything she recorded the little-known The Drought, eight minimal tracks released by the small label House Of Love. These fragile sketches are the result of sessions done in her bedroom back when she still lived with her parents in Birmingham.

Katie shed any electric impulse, set aside her light punk brashness and laid herself completely bare, just voice and acoustic guitar, while keeping close attention on melody ("Worse Today", "A Song For The Airport"). The lo-fi spirit is evident, with a sound quality that's at times deliberately rough around the edges ("Blank Tapes Baby"), but the seeds of a promising solo career had already been planted.

The evolution of this solo experiment came not long after, when, once again in the perfect solitude of her bedroom, with the few resources available to her, she recorded the ten acoustic tracks, pained in tone and vaguely grunge-tinged, that would make up her solo debut under the new name Waxahatchee, borrowed from the river that runs near her hometown.

Released in 2012, the stripped-back American Weekend lines up raw, unplugged confessions that were hugely appreciated in the underground circuit, fitting neatly into the lineage of blues-tinged, troubled female rockers brought back into vogue by the periodically resurgent wave of '90s revivalism. Her rough approach and introverted character made her perfectly suited to carve out a clearly defined space within that scene, placing her among a new generation of young singer-songwriters (worth mentioning at least Courtney Barnett and Torres) who would go on to make their mark in the years that followed.

From the opening "Catfish" onward, Katie appears bare and defenseless, grappling with fragile, introverted songs that seem like they could collapse at any moment, yet hold together and hit their mark. There's a good dose of anger ("Luminary Blake") in these personal confessions of a very young woman who nonetheless already carried a tangle of deeply formative recording experiences behind her. Crutchfield leans hard into Cobain territory (the heartfelt title track), but also knows how to draw on the solo Vedder of "Into The Wild" ("Be Good"). Only on the closing "Noccalula" is the guitar replaced by a piano, though the aesthetic result doesn't change.

Katie has plenty of sharp arrows in her quiver, yet the songs on American Weekend, recorded in a hurry, in under a week, ultimately prove too bare-bones to aspire to anything beyond cult status within a niche far too small to guarantee any real artistic longevity. Katie understands this perfectly well, and the record will remain merely a fleeting step before the singer-songwriter plans an upgrade towards her next transformation.

Katie needs to build arrangements that are “fuller” again, perhaps putting together a backing band that can help the seed already planted bloom. Within a few months, Cerulean Salt is ready, an album enriched by a far more varied instrumental palette, as well as generous injections of electricity, and a cleaner overall sound, even though the recordings still took place in a home environment. Some tracks, left deliberately barer, pick up where the recent past left off (“Hollow Bedroom” — the bedroom, precisely — “Blue Pt. 2” and “Tangled Envisioning”, offered with just voice and guitar, start exactly where we left things a few months earlier). The tracks always retain a graceful shape, performed with elegance (“Dixie Cups And Jars”, “Lips And Limbs”, “Brother Bryan”), with few concessions to the pure electricity drawn from Ackleys / P.S. Eliot (“Coast To Coast”, “Misery Over Dispute”, “Waiting”) that provide a welcome bit of contrast. The songs' low average running time, often under two minutes, also gives the record an interesting internal dynamic.

The influences remain rooted in the 90s, with guitar always at centre stage; the rich, intense lyricism continues to display remarkable narrative skill. Stories of suburban alienation, marginalisation, loneliness, and deep disillusion (“Lively” is a manifesto in this regard) are set within melodic frameworks that never blunt their evocative power. It's a record that nonetheless stays simple, often built on predictable chords (“Peace And Quiet”), with introverted, unmistakably folk-souled statements (“You're Damaged”) and echoes of early, abrasive PJ Harvey, albeit in a softened form (“Swan Dive”).

Cerulean Salt, in practice something like a manual of the perfect 90s indie-rocker, will be widely praised, even earning a flattering 8.4 on Pitchfork. Released in March 2013 in the United States by the small label Don Giovanni, it will come out four months later in the UK too, thanks to Wichita Records. Shortly after, Katie will sign a deal with Merge, for whom she'll record the album that will finally secure her the international visibility she deserves.

Ivy Tripp comes out in early 2015 and once again confirms Crutchfield's 90s leanings: the sense is that tracks like “Under A Rock”, “Poison” and “The Dirt” would surely have become Generation X anthems had they come out twenty years earlier. Alongside these, Katie also confirms a certain knack for writing minimal, often mournful sketches of introversion (“Stale By Noon”, “Blue”, “Summer Of Love”, “Half Moon”), and doesn't forsake the sacred gift of brevity, as with the pop delight “Grey Hair”, which wraps up in under two minutes. Textbook is “<”, which, after an opening section steeped in grunge suffering, opens out into unexpected offbeat rhythms and the repeated chant of “I Am Noting”, before a calligraphic, Pavement-esque epilogue.

Ivy Tripp is the work in which Katie manages to most fully blend the roots of her artistic journey, naturally mixing country-folk soul with indie-rock leanings. A record that finally draws major attention, allowing her to stay on tour for many months, share stages with the likes of Kurt Vile and Sleater-Kinney, and land, through the front door, on the line-ups of some of the most important and influential international festivals.

Following this success, Katie cleared out the drawers: in 2016, again on Merge, she released Early Recordings, an EP containing the first five songs recorded five years earlier under the Waxahatchee name. At the time they were committed solely to cassette, forming a split release (one side each) with musician Chris Claving.

Crutchfield's five tracks foreshadow the moods of what would become her first solo album, “American Weekend”, performed with nothing but a guitar, which functions more as a metronome than as genuine accompaniment. Early Recordings thus completes — who knows if truly for good — the maze of Katie's reincarnations and the sheer volume of songs she wrote in the pre-Waxahatchee era. A release aimed essentially at completist obsessives.

Allison's path

Meanwhile, her sister Allison went her own way, forming Swearin', a pop-punk-grunge quartet whose line-up also included Kyle Gilbride, previously of Big Soda. Swearin' drew on the sounds of Ackleys and P.S. Eliot, alternating melody with angry outbursts, and now Allison could try her hand at singing, trading off with Kyle. The two also became a couple for several years.

The band debuted in 2011 with the effective EP What A Dump, followed by the albums Swearin' (2012) and Surfing Strange (2013), all released on Salinas.

After a five-year absence, once the personal tensions between Allison and Kyle had been overcome, the project returned, reduced to a trio in the studio version, with two simultaneous releases: Fall Into The Sun (2018, released on Merge Records), slightly less jagged than the earlier albums, and the live album Swearin' On Audiotree Live.

During the band's hiatus, Allison also released two solo records that stayed fairly close to her sister's style: the forgettable Lean In To It (2014) and the slightly better Tourist In This Town (2017), the latter on Merge. Besides signing to largely the same labels, the twins have continued to collaborate consistently, playing together on several occasions both live and in the studio, and often opening for one another's shows.

Around the age of thirty

The next step under the Waxahatchee name is Out In The Storm (2017), which embarks on a kind of "normalization" process for the American singer-songwriter. Katie sheds the expressive shyness and the prickly, almost unkempt approach of her solo debut; the lo-fi dynamics typical of home recordings are completely set aside to make room for a higher-profile production. The album's main subject is the pain of a relationship ending, which pushes Crutchfield toward an electric charge that proves remarkable right from the opener "Never Been Wrong". There's a noticeable growth in her interpretive awareness, sharper songwriting and solid guitar technique, with the final result swinging opportunistically between decisive distortion and moments of delicacy. On "8 Ball" she flirts with country-oriented songwriting, while elsewhere that Nineties revival persists ("Silver", "Brass Beam", "Hear You", "No Question"), bringing her decisively close to post-"Jagged Little Pill" Alanis Morissette.

A record with fewer of the hard edges of her debut, but also fewer forced moments, trading the original weirdness for a desperate search for optimism and a clean, powerful sound courtesy of John Agnello's production. Despite the relationship wreckage narrated in the lyrics, there's a clear aspiration toward a vision that bans any neurosis, seeking out gentler solutions and playing the card of intimacy with just the right engagement: that's what happens in "Sparks Fly", in the organ of the more stately "Recite Remorse", in "A Little More" and in the evocative acoustic-folk farewell of "Fade".

The album, however, doesn't carry the same force as its predecessor: the emotional storm named in the title feels at times pale, muted, distant, and the curious eccentricity flaunted in the past has partly evaporated, perhaps sounding more authentic today, but also more predictable. Out In The Storm would later be released in a deluxe edition as well, in which the original ten tracks are joined, on a second disc, by demo (but already electrified) versions of all the songs. Listening to the whole thing makes it possible to reconstruct the artist's compositional process and imagine the arrangement steps built for each individual song.

Also in 2017, as a preview of "Out Of The Storm" but not included on the album despite being stylistically close to it, the single No Curse was released. The song is part of the Shaking Through project, a documentary series in which each episode follows a musician through the process of creating a new song, recorded for the occasion during two-day sessions at Miner Street Studios in Philadelphia. The series, launched in 2010, aims to raise funds for the non-profit Weathervane Music, created to support young musicians who lack adequate spaces to record their music.

At the start of 2018, a 7-inch was released featuring two Jason Molina covers, performed as a duo by Waxahatchee and Kevin Morby. The chosen tracks, "Farewell Transmission" and "The Dark Don't Hide It", pay tribute to the artist who died too young, released by the label Dead Oceans. The pair had previously collaborated on a cover of the Velvet Underground's "After Hours", recorded in 2017 by the then newly-formed couple.

The country-folk turn

In September 2018, the EP Great Thunder reveals a singer-songwriter at peace with herself, perhaps having moved past the relationship crisis that fueled the writing of the previous record. She had moved with Kevin Morby to Kansas City and recorded these six country-folk songs in the solitude of Bon Iver's studio in Wisconsin, performed with stripped-down instrumentation. These are reworkings of compositions written a few years earlier with Keith Spencer, as part of the short-lived duo project of the same name (Great Thunder).

As accompaniment, Katie almost always opts for solo piano ("Singer's No Star", "You're Welcome", "You Left Me With An Ocean"), or an acoustic guitar and little else ("Chapel Of Pines"), drawing closer than ever, in many passages, to the mood of peak Cat Power. "Slow You Down" is the only track where a flash of electricity appears, though always measured out gently and calmly, before returning to solo piano on the closing "Takes So Much".

Having crossed the threshold of thirty, with youthful anger and unease toned down, Katie Crutchfield completes her personal artistic metamorphosis with the subsequent Saint Cloud, released on Merge in late March 2020, right in the middle of the Covid-19 lockdown, a situation that would prevent her from touring in support of it in real time. Across her many reincarnations, Katie went through pop-punk during her high school years in Birmingham, Alabama, dusted off 90s college rock to become a cult figure of the new indie scene, and immersed herself in the country-folk that had somehow always been present in her DNA. Now she's ready to complete the arc that took her from the aching bedroom lo-fi confessions of American Weekend, through the electric drive of the essential Ivy Tripp, to the more "adult" and reflective songwriting expressed on Saint Cloud.

Having laid down the weapons of any rock urgency (a faint trace of it can still be found in "War"), Saint Cloud reveals an even more at-peace artist. Having overcome, by her own admission, her dependency on the bottle, she resolved matters of the heart by cementing her relationship with Kevin Morby, whom she references in "The Eye", a reflection on being a songwriter with a fellow songwriter as a partner. It's a "gentle" record, but never lacking a "springtime" energy ("Can't Do Much", "Lilacs"), a sense of rebirth that comes through as much in the hushed account of a friend who didn't make it (the more traditional "Ruby Falls") as in the flower pop (though lightly veiled in a subtle layer of melancholy) of "Hell" and "Witches".

As it unfolds, Saint Cloud connects the dots along an imaginary line that, starting from the classic pop perfection of Carole King, passes through the hippie lineage of Edie Brickell, the introspection of Cat Power and the spirituality of post-"Jagged Little Pill" Alanis Morissette, ending its arc somewhere around the slacker attitude perfectly embodied by Courtney Barnett. Even though Katie claims that her guiding spirit while writing these eleven tracks was Lucinda Williams and all the folksingers (Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt) she absorbed from her parents' record collection. The result is a turn that makes her appear, at times, even more credible and less forced than in the past.

The narrative unfolds like a journey along a map, moving from West Memphis to St. Cloud, Florida, her father's hometown. Along the way, places and characters pass by, with the great open spaces of the American South taking center stage, told with the positive energy of someone who has genuinely moved house more than once, relocating from her native Alabama first to Philadelphia, then to Brooklyn, and now to Kansas City. Her extraordinary gift for melody makes Katie even more authentic today, allowing her to reach levels of absolute excellence ("Oxbow", "Arkadelphia"), as if the garage-rock clothing she wore up through Out In The Storm had been little more than a necessity, now outgrown. This time the flannel shirts stay in the closet, making room for floral dresses, or sky-blue ones like the one worn on the cover, managing for half an hour to make every cloud in the world look blue, even the most threatening ones.

The Covid-19 pandemic, and the resulting travel restrictions, would prevent Katie from properly promoting Saint Cloud, which nonetheless ended up being one of her most acclaimed works with both audiences and critics. In March 2021, a year after its original release, a new edition titled Saint Cloud + 3 was issued, adding three covers to the original tracks.

These are "Fruits Of My Labour" (Lucinda Williams), "Light Of A Clear Blue Morning" (Dolly Parton) and "Streets Of Philadelphia" (Bruce Springsteen). The first was recorded during the Saint Cloud sessions, while the other two were captured later, during the summer of 2020.

Her passion for country roots resurfaces in 2022 with the new project Plains, shared with Texan singer-songwriter Jess Williamson. I Walked With You A Ways contains ten tracks that look back to the classics while also expressing a personal, modern vision, helped along by Brad Cook's work on production.

The two artists' voices blend perfectly in delicate vocal harmonies, while the songwriting lets each woman's distinctive style shine through: Kate draws on a classic sound steeped in the dust of alt-country and southern rock, while Jess contributes the more intimate, traditional songs. What dominates are the semi-desert open spaces and flat expanses associated with dusty highways stretching toward the horizon.

In March 2024 the American singer-songwriter replicates the winning formula of "Saint Cloud" with Tigers Blood, again with Brad Cook behind the production desk. Tigers Blood contains twelve new songs that come across as even sturdier than its predecessor overall, while retaining the same refined arrangements and consistently solid songwriting.

A borderline work that stays perpetually poised between alt-country and southern rock, helped along by the guitar contributions of MJ Lenderman (which surface especially toward the end of "Ice Cold") and the drumming of music-scion Spencer Tweedy.

On Halloween 2025, with no advance notice, comes Snocaps, the self-titled debut album of the new project helmed by the Crutchfield twins, who for the occasion bring on board MJ Lenderman, the guitarist of Wednesday (by now also a well-regarded leader of his own band) and producer Brad Cook, already a repeat collaborator of Katie's. It consists of twelve tracks (plus a short closing reprise) of country-pop through which the twins offer a compendium of their shared past. On the new songs Katie and Allison always keep a firm hold on center stage, with Lenderman much more restrained than the Neil Young-style rides and noise excursions he has accustomed us to, even though his imprint is unmistakable from the very first notes of opener "Coast", the track chosen as the single, for which a promotional video was also made.

Katie and Allison split the spotlight evenly, confirming songwriting of the very highest order, amid tales of car getaways and accounts of various addictions. The sound is consistently quite full-bodied, with just a couple of tracks left at a more minimal stage, the meditative "Hide" (which opens like U2's "All I Want Is You") and "I Don't Want To". The pop-oriented side prevails on tracks like "Heathcliff" and "Wasteland", while "Angel Wings" carries a whiff of country roots, a fairly breezy indie-rock touch runs through "Brand New City", "Over Our Heads", "Doom" and "You In Rehab", while "Cherry Hard Candy" and "Avalanche" radiate real sunniness. The Crutchfields and Lenderman constantly swap instruments (guitars, bass, drums) without any song ever losing an ounce of its effectiveness. They really do seem born to play together.

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