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.
