When you hear an artist described as a ‘girl with a guitar’ it’s almost insulting – bringing to mind overly emotional, here’s-my-teenage-diary style acoustic balladry.
Why is that? When so very many women make music that is absolutely amazing? We could discuss the whole sexism in music can of worms but instead, just know that Waxahatchee is one such woman who shatters any of those presumptions.
Waxahatchee aka Katie Crutchfield makes minimal guitar pop not unlike the later work of Riot Grrrls such as Kristin Hersh, Tanya Donelly and Corin Tucker.
Perhaps this comparison is easy to make thanks to the overriding nineties feeling of the album – a decade we have all been nostalgic for lately, even the youngsters among us who can barely remember it.
With this in mind, Cerulean Salt is right on trend and probably something you need to listen to if you are having pangs for the decade that saw Daria’s acerbic wit, Liz Phair’s guile, and Janeane Garofalo’ s cynicism in the relative mainstream.
A prime example is opening track “Hollow Bedroom”, which makes you feel sentimental even on first listen, before giving way to the more fleshed out “Dixie Cups and Jars”, where Crutchfield also employs bass and drums.
Indeed, Crutchfield traverses between plugged in and acoustic, solo and trio, all the while conjuring up a sense of Americana in her song writing.
She also manages to manipulate the afore mentioned wit, guile and cynicism into beautiful lyrics that are autobiographical but undoubtedly ring true for many of us.
The magic of this album and its time travelling capabilities is how it reminds us of a period brimming with empowered women who were much more than ‘girls with guitars’.
