Review: Waxahatchee at The Orange Peel
Yes, Asheville: He showed.
Waxahatchee’s April 30 show at The Orange Peel sold out weeks ago on the buzz behind singer/songwriter Katie Crutchfield’s acclaimed new album, Tiger’s Blood, but also on hopes that local hero MJ Lenderman — whose guitar playing and harmony singing are said record’s X factor — would make an unannounced cameo.
But the night was special even without this very special guest, with Crutchfield & Co. more than carrying the show on their own. Sounding confident from the get-go, the five-piece Waxahatchee backing band eased into the chords of “3 Sisters,” as white, globe-shaped light bulbs glowed against a backdrop of orange, horseshoe-shaped fixtures.
The headliner made her entrance after a few instrumental measures, waving and smiling before stepping up onto a small, round platform perched at the front of the stage to deliver the Tiger’s Blood opener’s first falsetto notes over guitars and organ. She’s played Asheville a bunch of times over the years, from a YouTube-captured solo performance at Hot Stuff Tattoo a dozen years ago, to a 2022 Orange Peel date with Madi Diaz, but this was her moment.
Two verses in, she frisbeed her K.C. trucker cap — repping her adopted hometown of Kansas City, where she lives with partner and fellow recording artist Kevin Morby — into the crowd as drummer Spencer Tweedy corralled the rest of the group into the revved-up finale.
“Evil Spawn” then kicked the energy up yet another notch with Crutchfield strumming a black Gibson acoustic into a churning chorus that explores the fine line between chemistry and codependency: “There ain’t nothing to it, babe/We can roll around in the disarray/In the final act of the good ole days.”
The band never broke stride, barreling with efficiency through 24 songs in just over 90 minutes. The well-curated set included all 12 tracks from Tiger’s Blood, plus choice cuts from its Waxahatchee predecessor, Saint Cloud, and I Walked With You A Ways, Crutchfield’s duo album with Jess Williamson under the moniker Plains. Between-song transitions and instrument handoffs were swift, and the players prioritized feel over flashiness while rendering Crutchfield’s taut compositions (most of her songs hover around the three-minute mark) with tasteful embellishments.
A half-hour or so in, Crutchfield invited Lenderman up for their timeless duet that anchors the new album, “Right Back to It” — a banjo-plucked ode to the boomerang virtues of a broken-in relationship, followed by the similarly themed “Burns Out at Midnight.”
The pair met just over two years ago at SXSW in Austin. Crutchfield caught Lenderman’s set and was smitten by the fusion of loud ’90s indie rock and alt-country. She brought his band on tour with Plains, and when it came time to record Tiger’s Blood, hot-handed producer Brad Cook recruited Lenderman, who also plays guitar in the Asheville-based group Wednesday, to join the sessions.
They tracked “Right Back to It” on day one, with Crutchfield providing Lenderman — 10 years her junior — with what he described as “stage mom” coaching on the lower-register harmonies she envisioned. Their lightning-in-a-bottle vocal chemistry captured on the first demo emerged as the album’s North Star in sound and feel, and a no-brainer choice for a lead single.
The ever-understated Lenderman nailed his sit-in at the Peel, his first since a sublime performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Smartphones flashed up to capture the rare on-stage collaboration, which carried even more emotional weight in Lenderman’s hometown.
Great albums don’t always beget great live shows, but Tiger’s Blood translates to the stage thanks to the ensemble Crutchfield curated to channel its earthy, countrypolitan textures with pedal steel, banjo, dobro, keyboards, and electric guitars. Bassist Eliana Athayde’s warmly tethered harmonies were a fortifying ingredient, buttering up tender selections like “Lone Star Lake,” “Ruby Falls,” and “365” — performed in near pin-drop silence — and buttressing jangly heartland rockers like the Tom Petty-esque “Crowbar” and “Bored.”
Crutchfield fully owned the frontwoman role, tailoring her performance and delivery to complement each song’s character. Confident and full-voiced, she crisscrossed the stage on the acerbic kiss-off, “Hell,” dropped to her knees, sans guitar, for the aching “Crimes of the Heart,” and led head-nodding singalongs on the Plains bangers “Problem With It” and “Hurricane.”
Her vocals were front and center in the mix, illuminating both her singular, Alabama-accented voice and tangled poetry. Crutchfield’s verses unfurl with a metered, tension-building cadence, more often than not accented by sustained, higher-octave trills that stretch certain vowels into a multisyllabic melody.
Somewhere between a yodel and a yelp, the distinctive device is whispery and fragile at times, shrill and range-challenging at others. It’s an acquired taste to some, but beloved by the Waxahatchee faithful for the nuance and dramatic effect it lends to Crutchfield’s lyrical themes. Her writing offers subtle glimpses into her inner world via ruminations on growth and grief, struggle and surrender, with rustic, red-clay detail — mentions of seersucker, Jeeps, creeks, copperheads, pocket knives, and honeysuckle are all present — creating a sense of place and adding conversational intimacy to her often-abstract language.
The main set closed with the album’s nostalgic title track, named for Crutchfield’s favorite sno-cone flavor growing up in Birmingham: a sticky-sweet fusion of strawberry and coconut. Lenderman and Good Morning, the Australian indie-pop openers, formed a bespoke choir, huddled around microphones and swaying in waltz time to sing one of the record’s finest choruses:
And I held it like a penny I found
It might bring me something, it might weigh me down
You got every excuse, but it's an eerie sound
Oh, when that siren blows, rings out all over town
When that siren blows, rings out all over town
The encore opened with a cover of “Abandoned” by Crutchfield’s hero, Lucinda Williams, who joined the band for the song the following night at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. A twangy presentation of “Oxbow” followed with the high-and-lonesome pairing of pedal steel and piano subbing for the synthy atmospherics of the genre-fluid Saint Cloud opener, which ends with Crutchfield repeating the mantra “I want it all” in that trademark Waxahatchee warble.
“Fire,” a fan-favorite anthem of radical self-acceptance and unconditional self-love, closed the night. Crutchfield calls the song, which she wrote early on in her sobriety journey, “a bit of a personal pep talk” to take steps towards her own personal truth.
Now, four years later, she’s touring to support an album of songs fans will likely still be singing along to a decade from now, and that will deservedly continue to elevate her profile. As an artist in her creative prime, she’s clearly following her own advice.
(Photos by Justin Bowman)
