★★★★★
The temptation to shoehorn Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield, playing under the name Waxahatchee, into the procession of confessional women in the arts belies the depth of her second album Cerulean Salt. One interview categorised Crutchfield as "like Lena Dunham with a guitar" which sounds like the worst party ever but actually isn't far from the truth...
- www.state.ie
2013-07-16
★★★★★
Twenty years ago, the American singer Liz Phair released her debut album Exile In Guysville. Billed as a "track by track response to Exile On Main Street", it was an astonishing record, full of scratchy, raw songs about dysfunctional relationships, enlivened by some sexually frank lyrics. To hear a woman singing "every time I see your face I get all wet between my legs" was quite the eyebrow-raiser in 1993...
- www.musicomh.com
2013-07-09
★★★★★
Alabama native Katie Crutchfield's debut LP as Waxahatchee, 2012's 'American Weekend', was an intimate and personal affair. This follow-up finds the former punk, still in her early 20s, further honing her mature grasp on cultured matters, but ultimately comes over as more interested in problems rather than solutions. Over its 12-track course, 'Cerulean Salt' seems initially sparse...
- www.clashmusic.com
2013-07-05
★★★★★
On American Weekend, Katie Crutchfield's 2012 debut as Waxahatchee, threadbare acoustic guitars formed the backdrop to songs that frankly explored the doomed relationships lining its maker's rocky transition into adulthood. "I'm aware that I am falling flat, and you will hurt me," she sang on 'I Think I Love You'. "And I deserve it." As Crutchfield has explained in interviews, sad songs are a natural fit for her; attempting to convey other emotions simply doesn't ring true...
- thequietus.com
2013-07-12
★★★★★
Katie Crutchfield alias Waxahatchee: 'seriously moreish'. Photograph: Gary Wolstenholme/ Redferns via Getty Images "I look like I got my way/ But truly, I left with nothing at all," begins this flannel-clad break-up album, one that peers out from behind a Native American place name (Alabama's Waxahatchee Creek) and teases with a title that sends you scurrying for the dictionary (it means sky blue)...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-06-30
★★★★★
The new album from Waxahatchee, the alter ego of Katie Crutchfield, finally gets a UK release a full four months after its US debut. This follow-up to last year's effort has been recorded in the same low-key fashion in Crutchfield's bedroom, this time eschewing her previous folk acoustic stylings and roping in some of her roommates and friends to play back up. With production again by Don Giovanni, Cerulean Salt keeps that rougher lo-fi feel, just with added volume...
- music.thedigitalfix.com
2013-07-13
★★★★★
The new album from Waxahatchee, the alter ego of Katie Crutchfield, finally gets a UK release a full four months after its US debut. This follow-up to last year's effort has been recorded in the same low-key fashion in Crutchfield's bedroom, this time eschewing her previous folk acoustic stylings and roping in some of her roommates and friends to play back up. With production again by Don Giovanni, Cerulean Salt keeps that rougher lo-fi feel, just with added volume...
- music.thedigitalfix.com
2013-06-29
★★★★★
The songs Katie Crutchfield sings as Waxahatchee are like scalpels: they slice through her life, her loves and her dreams, ruthlessly excising any hint of self-deceit. Listen to how she addresses a boy in Swan Dive: "Won't you sleep with me every night for a week/ Won't you just let me pretend this is the love I need? I will grow out of all the empty words I often speak, and you will be depleted but much better off without me...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-06-28
★★★★★
Waxahatchee is Alabama's Katie Crutchfield - ex-punk, perennially restless, veteran twentysomething. Debut LP American Weekend, stamped with confrontational intimacy and nervous tape hiss, chronicled her ongoing self-appraisal, a personal whirlwind of close friends and distant family that rarely overestimated our interest. It was a moving, albeit straightforward document...
- drownedinsound.com
2013-06-26