Waxahatchee Plays With Seething Power at Wonder Ballroom

With her killer band, Katie Crutchfield scorched through every haunting song off her latest masterpiece, "Out in the Storm."

Waxahatchee at Wonder Ballroom on July 26. IMAGE: Sofie Murray.

Waxahatchee frontwoman Katie Crutchfield emerged from behind the curtains of the Wonder Ballroom on July 26, cloaked in black and wearing a self-assured stare. As she dove into "Recite Remorse," off her spellbinding new album, Out in the Storm, she left her hands free to take control of the microphone, singing, "For a moment I was not lost/I was waiting for permission to take off."

With her killer band—which includes her twin sister, Allison— Crutchfield scorched through every haunting song off of Waxahatchee's latest masterpiece. There was no shortage of classics from earlier in the Waxahatchee discography, including a bewitching performance of "Brother Bryan," from 2013's Cerulean Salt.

But the new material shined brightest. Out in the Storm tells the story of a relationship that seemed to wring Crutchfield out of her own body. In Portland, Waxahatchee performed "Brass Beam" as a seething reclamation of power. Crutchfield gripped her guitar with all her strength as she sang, "I couldn't see the sun from there, just a beam/I thought it would never come out, yeah, I had to leave." The more fragile "A Little More" lingered with a similar message, only with less noise: "I'll fly away just like a bird/A jagged truth left unheard/And I live a little more/And I die a little more."

For a moment after the last note rang out of closing song "Under a Rock," Crutchfield's hair fell across her face in  the same arrangement as shown on the cover of Out in the Storm, and she smiled. It feels good to get lost in a performance, but for that moment, she didn't seem lost—she was just soaking in the joy of it.

All photos by Sofie Murray.

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