ACL Review: Waxahatchee

Most of Waxahatchee’s music isn’t meant for festivals. Katie Crutchfield, originator of the Alabama-birthed project, built her discography on intrepid vulnerability and staggering accessibility. Recorded in isolated childhood bedrooms or houses with a handful of people she loves, her work is often sad: sparse and imbued with intimate narratives.

Katie Crutchfield (Photo by David Brendan Hall)

Yet there Waxahatchee was, beneath an unforgiving Texan sun, at noon on Sunday. Playing that same music. At ACL.

Latest album Ivy Tripp is a fuller album, with catchier hooks and louder instruments, and significantly more Nineties inspiration. That was the sound Waxahatchee brought to the Miller Lite stage. Tried to, anyway.

Newbies to the fest, the fivepiece opened with “Dixie Cups and Jars” off of 2013’s acclaimed Cerulean Salt before a modest crowd for a mild 40-minute set. So mild that two young women in the audience were sitting on the grass and annotating textbooks while the band performed.

The newer material played out best. “Poison” and “The Dirt,” two radio-friendly tracks off of Ivy Tripp, had genuine punches of energy. A surprising cover of Lucinda Williams’ “I Lost It” was also a gratifying moment, with Crutchfield nailing that Williams croon.

The high point occurred with “Under a Rock,” Crutchfield wailing her sharp turn of phrase: “Your ravenous, insatiable appetite for the expendable/ Will leave you just as hollow as your requiem/ You’ll bang it like a drum.”

Things got strange on the bedroom recordings. “Grass Stain” from American Weekend (2012) could’ve done without additional instrumentation, the polish of recent work leaving earlier lo-fi material sounding unfamiliar. The embrace of their newfound pop sound came off ballsy, but not quite festival.

Yet.