In a strange way, the greatest compliment you could pay Waxahatchee — the longstanding creative project of Alabama-born musician Katie Crutchfield — is that their set feels ever so faintly underwhelming. Over the course of a stirring 90 minutes at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo, Crutchfield and her five-person Americana band pluck from her two best albums, Saint Cloud (2020) and Tiger’s Blood (2024), with total aplomb. It’s a night of polished exceptionalism: the musicianship, and Crutchfield’s singing – heavy musical artillery, a voice that’s rangy and complexly sad – are more or less perfect.
The problem Crutchfield faces is that greatness is now the bar, and the expectation. In the five years since Saint Cloud – an album that saw Crutchfield lurch away from the more rock-centred sound of Waxahatchee’s first four records, and which coincided with her getting sober – she has established herself as a songwriter and performer of real significance. On tracks such as “Lone Star Lake”, one of the night’s real highlights, warm and tuneful country-rock harmonies are used to smuggle a dense, confessional poetry in the lyrics. It’s clever, affecting, and, at this point, a little unsurprising.
“I think this might be the biggest headline show we’ve ever done,” Crutchfield tells the auditorium, in one of two moments of fleeting crowdwork. (With banter kept to an absolute minimum, Crutchfield clearly prefers to let her lyrics do the talking – cryptic metaphors and all.) The Apollo, however, presents certain challenges: its cavernous space creates wonky acoustics, and the sound, if you’re standing in the wrong part of the audience, comes out muffled. It’s a particular shame given the richness of the band’s soundscape.
If you’re able to properly hear it, there is an impressive cohesion to Crutchfield’s sound – a sort of propulsive folk-country-indie fusion – that falls just shy of repetitiveness. “Mud”, a recent single performed here with gusto, feels entirely of a piece with Tiger’s Blood, likewise “Hurricane”, a song from her 2023 collaboration with Jess Williamson, under the name Plains. Even the night’s sole cover, a rendition of “Six O’Clock News” from Kathleen Edwards’s brilliant 2002 record Failer, fits sonically into her repertoire with a snugness that’s almost eerie.
The only thing missing from the night is an element of chaos. There is a kind of practised excellence to Crutchfield as a performer: no solo is too long, no movement too frenetic. For “Crimes of the Heart”, she sits stage right, legs crossed, carried by the crash of a tambourine and two sparse guitars. Later, she stands and sings stage left. It’s not quite mechanical, but there’s a slight lack of spontaneity. Even the encore, which sees Crutchfield bust out a new, unreleased track, has a sort of steady familiarity to it. The song, of course, is great. What else is new?
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