Kansas Comes To Toad’s

“I’ve been yours for so long / We come right back to it.” 

It was a refrain I’d heard maybe hundreds of times at that point, the croon of Katie Crutchfield’s voice and the banjo backing her committed to memory. But Thursday night, as I heard it live and sang along with a crowd filling up Waxahatchee’s sold-out show at Toad’s Place, the song felt new. 

“Right Back To It” was the first single Waxahatchee released, months ago, from her newest album Tiger’s Blood, released in March. Since then, it played on loop in both the Independent’s office and in the innermost corners of my brain. 

Crutchfield formed Waxahatchee in 2010 and has released six studio albums, all falling under the umbrella of Americana. New Haven was the sixth stop on her most recent tour, in which she’s backed up by a full band — Spencer Tweedy on drums, Colin Croom on keys, Eliana Athayde on bass, Cole Berggren on keys and banjo, and Clay Frankel on guitar. The crowd, diverse in age and gender, was ready to welcome her. 

The show opened with Melbourne-based duo Good Morning (lead vocalists and guitarists Stefan Blair and Liam Parsons) and their backing band. I’d never heard their music before, but I soon found myself swaying and nodding to their laid-back, coastal sound. This didn’t mean that their songs were happy; oftentimes, they felt a little moody. In a new and still unreleased song, Parsons sang, ​“I’m a sad summer reverie / I’m a shit-talking memory.” That felt right: They sounded like the water, but it wasn’t much of a beach day. Maybe it was music for floating on your back, for looking up at the sun while the corners of your vision blur.

Still, the band was having fun. The duo sipped from Coronas before launching back into their set of short songs with straightforward lyrics like, ​“Met her in a dream and I think you were there too / When I said I want a daughter, darling, I wanted one with you.” 

If Good Morning was the coast, Waxahatchee was the creek — maybe the very one Crutchfield named the project after, in Alabama where she grew up. Although Crutchfield now lives in Kansas (she walked on stage with a Kansas City hat on, though she quickly handed it to a fan in the crowd), her sound is distinctively Southern. It was apt that the song that played right before she and her band went up was Cheap Trick’s ​“Southern Girls.”

“I pick you up inside a hopeless prayer,” she sang as she began her set. The first song was ​“3 Sisters,” a number that starts off slow and stripped down before eventually kicking into gear. ​“You drive like you’re wanted in four states, in a busted truck in Opelika.” She danced around stage and strummed her acoustic guitar and sang of devotion and roads and lakes in a voice unlike any other I’ve heard before, one that’s somehow both brittle and strong, sharp and gentle. 

The curve of her vowels, the riffing that backs her, the inability to keep from dancing — Waxahatchee is the sound of cicada season. Between Crutchfield’s voice and the prowess of her band (guitar forward but still balanced, at times featuring shakers and banjo) Waxahatchee was a southern summer’s dusk, after a day of the sun beating down on your back. Salt marshes and the humidity finally breaking. It was familiar, and I was happy to experience it here in New Haven. Crutchfield, for her part, had experienced some of New Haven, too. ​“We had a lovely day in New Haven, tried some of your pizza. You guys really know what you’re doing,” she said.

There were softer moments, as in the vulnerable ​“Crimes of the Heart,” where Crutchfield was backed by keys and gentle strumming as she sang, ​“And I could’ve called I suppose, I’m the thorn on your rose / I’m the emperor’s new clothes / And I make it look easier every time.” Or in ​“Ruby Falls,” when she sang ​“I’ll sing a song at your funeral / Laid in the Mississippi gulf / Or back home at Waxahatchee creek.” 

But mostly, the energy was high. In ​“Hell,” Crutchfield sang, ​“And I hover above like a deity / But you don’t worship me.” Then, ​“I’ll put you through hell.” She curled her upper lip and furrowed her eyebrows, tossing her hair as she moved her whole body in joining her band in playing, and I realized for the first time how gritty her music was. Oftentimes throughout the night, it felt like I was seeing a rock band perform — it was loud, there was frustration, and Crutchfield held notes so long it might have been confused for yelling. 

Waxahatachee finished strong, playing ​“365” (an exercise in control that had Crutchfield’s bandmates nodding in approval at its heights) and ending with ​“Fire,” an older song. It’s one I love, one I had to immediately play again the first time I heard it, and then again, and again. 

“It’s not as if we cry a river, call it rain,” Crutchfield sang, and the crowd sang it with her. Full force. ​“West Memphis is on fire in the light of day / Give me something, it ain’t enough / It ain’t enough.”