Gig Review: Waxahatchee At Leeds Irish Centre

Katie Crutchfield's Americana sound enchants in a sold-out performance, solidifying her place alongside Lucinda Williams.

Waxahatchee is country. Earlier in Katie Crutchfield’s career you may have plausibly flicked through stacks labeled ‘folk’ in search of her sparse, lo-fi acoustic recordings, or ‘indie-rock’ when she added electric guitars and deeper textures. But now, she will be nestled near her hero: Williams, Lucinda.

Crutchfield drew a line between where she was about to go and her previous four albums when she released Saint Cloud in 2020, an album of Americana and the sound of her home in the South of America. This year’s Tigers Blood saw her tread down the same path of sunburnt country. Tonight, at her sold-out Leeds Irish Center show, she underlines the distinction made between her career before Saint Cloud and now. Across the 24 songs she and her band play tonight, 12 are from Tigers Blood, eight are from Saint Cloud, three are from the inbetween Plains album I Walked with You a Ways and one is new.

Live, these songs are deft, soft and bright. Her band is skilled and well oiled, their screws loosened just enough to make it all sound effortless. Lone Star Lake is smooth and soothing, like sucking a throat lozenge. The peels of harmonica that start Burns At Midnight are stunning and lifting. Crutchfield's vocals on Crimes of the Heart are first low and hushed, before making a subtle hop, skip and a jump into long high notes sung over crosshatched strums of acoustic guitar. The moving parts of Lilacs click and clack as they slot together, like a crossword reaching its conclusion. Arpeggios of banjo trickle through most songs and bursts of electric guitar and pedal steel shoot life through the veins of the songs.

All of this happens in front of streaks of small white lights hovering against a black backdrop, like stars in a pitch black night or the speckled promise of a white Christmas on a dark December morning. Studio lights throb blue, red, pink and amber as they encapsulate the mood of each song. When Crutchfield performs the serious, moody Oxbow they glow red. On the searching, melancholy 365 they are indigo. On Right Back To It, they are a warm and comforting amber pulse, they make you think, for a second, you are watching a gig from inside James’s Giant Peach.

Crutchfield barely addresses the crowd tonight. She thanks them for coming and introduces her band. When they pause to swap instruments, change their positions or tune their strings, she paces the stage silently. When she sings her arms stretch wide, she takes the microphone in one hand, stands in front of the parted red velvet drapes and addresses each side of the room. They gaze upwards and require no encouragement to sing along. When the encore starts with a new song, another rolling country number, they know where they will find it when it is released. Waxahatchee is a country singer, on her way to becoming a star.