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Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield is incredibly confident. Or slightly mad. Or just a remarkably generous music fan who wants to bless people with glittering pop pleasure even when she's not on stage. Whatever her motivation, Crutchfield's tour in support of last month's Ivy Tripp betrays real bravery, for she has chosen to take the extraordinary Girlpool on the road with her, and I can't imagine the band's bar-raising and potentially show-stealing Doug Fir performance was a fluke.
Embarrassing professional disclosure: I was not familiar with Girlpool before the show, and I feel stupid about this. But also: What a rare and glorious opportunity to be stunned by an unfamiliar force. Girlpool is amazing, and my life is better now that I have crossed paths with the weird, sweet sounds made by Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad. It's hard to find a precedent for the guitar-and-bass duo's stirring electric folk-pop, but a nod in the direction of the Raincoats' off-kilter rhythms and unexpected ecstasies would be a decent place to start. Its disarming directness and evident joy in creation also recalls the enchantment and rapture that made the Microphones, Mirah, Little Wings et al. such wise guides through the wilds of young adulthood, even if it doesn't necessarily share that early 2000s K Records sound.
Their voices bound and soaring, their instruments dancing with and then against each other, Tucker and Tividad nail collegiate coming-into-feeling, and it is awesome. These lines, for instance, which I had to Google after the show, due to the fact that they nearly made my cry: "Your pain is an endless cycle/The globe is a spinning rifle/It's hard to see things simply/When my thoughts are evoked within me." That might look a little bit silly and self-obsessed and romantic on the page, but when those words come to life in song, they ring beautiful and true. And make grown-ass people nearly cry.
So yeah, Waxahatchee ran the risk of delivering an hour-long anti-climax, and opening with a quiet dirge like âBreathlessâ only confirmed the suspicion that the night peaked early. Which isnât to say itâs a bad song. Itâs a great song, a killer soundtrack for wallowers intent on following sadness into deep and dark places. The Waxahatchee catalog is home to a number of songs like this, but once she got âBreathlessâ out of her system, Crutchfield jettisoned dourness and got down to the life-affirming business of putting on a perfect rock show.
Even the boisterous songs on Waxahatchee's albums sound a bit timid and insular, like they can't quite escape Crutchfield's bedroom pop roots—again, a good thing for folks who like midnight drives through dense fog. Onstage and backed by a full band, though, Crutchfield is a straight-up blast, her songs louder, shorter, faster and simply more fun than their studio twins. But the hurts and heartaches that make Ivy Tripp and 2013's Cerulean Salt such affecting albums are still there, because Crutchfield's striking voice is still there, piercing through the bright noise and hitting all the best and most tender spots. It's phenomenal.
Final score: Girlpool and Waxahatchee tie, everyone wins.
WWeek 2015