And now we get to the other one-third of Wednesday, in the genre… well, uh…
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[5.86]
Micha Cavaseno: Waxahatchee has been bubbling for a minute, threatening to turn into her generation’s Cat Power, though for the life of me I can’t get it. It’s not like her turn of a phrase is any poorer, or the new choice of alt-rock backing thud any particularly worse. And yeah, her voice sounds a little more like Lisa Loeb now that it’s going pro-league. But the conventions of this song just feel a bit too conceding, like it was all too easy a step to make. The rock she was under — well, she wasn’t exactly hiding there with an intent to stay, y’know?
[4]
Josh Love: The high praise I can give this raucous, full-throated country-rocker is that it inspired me to investigate whatever happened to Kathleen Edwards (incidentally, she’s stopped making music and opened a cafe near Ottawa, which, good for her, but bad for those of us who care a lot more about her lyrics than her lattes). Katie Crutchfield might just make a worthy heir if her new album proves her capable of maintaining this level of grit and gusto. At 128 seconds, this is just really good instant coffee.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Cerulean Salt, a solid album, also inspired a couple of good festival performances. “Under a Rock” sounds designed to fade into the post-lunch fog around which festival attendants wander from stage to stage. The arrangement has no surprise at all. They should have released the new album’s synthy one.
[5]
Anthony Easton: I want her voice to not be overwhelmed by the racket of the other instruments. The Lomax brothers went to Alabama trying to find that pure southern sound, and to claim it as authentic; Waxahatchee live in Brooklyn now, and my nervousness about their distance from Alabama is a kind of claiming authenticity, which is equally problematic. But while these might be aesthetic choices, they are aesthetic choices that contain so much baggage.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: I keep changing my mind of who Waxahatchee reminds me of. Before it was Cat Power or Kristin Hersh, almost; now it’s Tanya Donelly (this always seems one riff switch away from becoming “Pretty Deep“) or Anna Waronker, solo, particularly how her high notes go plaintive — which seems a better fit with her colleagues. If you, like me, have searched the 2010s landscape fruitlessly for those songwriters’ successors, here’s a project to follow.
[7]
Brad Shoup: Oh, power pop! I know how to process this. You’ve got the lyric that sounds better than it scans — I see you, “I got to you, imparting” — and those root notes that peal like a siren. If this is actually a Tom Petty song I don’t give a shit.
[9]
Mo Kim: Anger and half-buried resentment seeps out of those drawn-out guitar chords; the drums, on the other hand, thump with resignation, as if the only thing to do in the aftermath is to move on. This sort of thoughtful, intelligent composure isn’t always as satisfying as the immediate catharsis of a “fuck you,” but this song suggests that learning to take the high road is half the battle of adulthood.
[7]