Hometown: Alabama.
The lineup: Katie Crutchfield (vocals, guitar), Kyle Gilbride (bass), Keith Spencer (drums).
The background: There used to be lots of Katie Crutchfields. They were the very air that the rock criterati breathed. Twenty years ago they were as prevalent as the Adele Mini Me's are today, only there were things to say about them beyond measuring the proficiency of their voice. In fact, there were so many of these electrified – and occasionally electrifying – women that the biggest of them, such as Kim Deal or Liz Phair, seemed to archly comment on the genre to which they were affiliated even as they sang their seemingly heartfelt paeans and anthems to empowerment. They were so ubiquitous, indeed, that Courtney Love, one of their prime movers, saw fit to sidestep or subvert the medium by assuming a radically soft position to the left of it. But it's a sign of the relative dearth of such performers these days that Crutchfield as Waxahatchee feels like a bit of a bolt from the blue, a splash of freshness amid all the wannabe soul belters and glossy melisma addicts. Welcome back, sassy, sardonic guitar girl.
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No wonder she is being greeted so warmly: older critics haven't had one of these for a while, and younger ones won't have experienced one in real time. She reeks of 1993, does Crutchfield, and she recalls the heyday of college radio and alt rock. You can imagine her stepping out with one of Pavement or Sebadoh back in the day. Back in the present, she's signed to Wichita and her first official UK release will be the single Coast to Coast, followed a week later by the album Cerulean Salt, actually the follow-up to her 2012 debut, American Weekend. And on June 14 she plays at Dalston Roof Gardens, having sold out the Shacklewell Arms the night before. There, she will presumably perform material from her two albums and demonstrate the shift from acoustic lo-fi to a more explicitly lacerating style that is the corollary of adding a bassist and drummer to the mix. The 13 tracks on Cerulean Salt are mainly variations on a musical theme, although there are hints that, given fuller arrangements, some would probably sound more grungey while others would move further in a powerpop direction. Crutchfield's voice throughout is husky and suggests an itinerant-bohemian lifestyle that is highly seductive. She sounds like what she probably is: a drifter, moving as much out of a sense of curiosity as dissatisfaction. Her songs feel like protest songs, only the subjects would appear to be people she knows rather than blank political targets. The atmosphere is intimate, but it's not universal-intimate – it's a glimpse, as we say, into a certain type of world, one that not everyone is at liberty to enjoy. "This place is vile and I'm vile, too," she sings at one point. Let us be the judge of that.
The buzz: "Cerulean Salt is going to be heard."
The truth: She's more Liz Phair than Lilith Fair.
Most likely to: Wax lyrical.
Least likely to: Feel like an exile in guyville.
What to buy: Cerulean Salt is released by Wichita on 1 July.
File next to: Liz Phair, Kim Deal, Cat Power, Juliana Hatfield.
Links: waxahatchee.bandcamp.com.
Thursday's new band: Phreeda Sharp.
