Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield Gets Candid on Out in the Storm
On her fourth LP, she draws inspiration from her live band

When Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee released her last record, Ivy Tripp, in 2015, she called the album a gas, and her release before that, 2013’s Cerulean Salt, a solid. This Friday, she releases her fourth full-length via Merge Records, Out in the Storm, but it may not symbolize a physical state of matter like her earlier works. On this record, Crutchfield becomes a scientific element—explosive, volatile and uncontrollable. She proclaims on the coincidentally titled “Silver,” “If I turn to stone/The whole world keeps turning/I went out in the storm/And I’m never returning.”
Since American Weekend, Crutchfield’s intimate, lo-fi solo debut in 2012, Waxahatchee has become known for harshly self-aware, candid songwriting. Her releases since then have expanded listeners’ affection and trust in Crutchfield’s honesty, which is why it is so surprising—and intriguing—that Out in the Storm is being deemed Waxahatchee’s most autobiographical album to date.
“When I wrote my second record, I didn’t have that many fans. I didn’t expect for as many people to even hear that album as they did,” the 28-year-old Alabama-born, Philadelphia-based musician recalls over the phone. “I kind of felt like I was still writing stuff that was just going to be mine.”
Like all of Waxahatchee’s work, Ivy Tripp was completely honest, according to Crutchfield, but it was not as literal as the project’s earlier tracks, or Crutchfield’s work in her former Philadelphian pop punk band, P.S. Eliot. Crutchfield experimented with poetic language and discreet metaphors on Ivy Tripp, never making the topic of a song too palpable. “I felt like I had been working with the same people so much that I almost felt like too many eyes were on me,” explains Crutchfield. “I think maybe just feeling like too many people were gonna pick it apart sort of put me off of it for a while.” While American Weekend was passed around like a secret note in class, Cerulean Salt read it aloud for all to hear, and Ivy Tripp handwrote it out on the blackboard. Out in the Storm finally screams the truth over the loudspeaker.
“I felt even more like myself writing this album,” Crutchfield says, identifying that her writing process on Out in the Storm had not changed so much as it had reverted to a style she dates back to high school. “I had more space than I had had in a long time. I didn’t have anyone breathing down my neck. That’s really the main ingredient for my songwriting process: A lot of time and space. It was kind of like the throwback to my glory days of songwriting,” she says, laughing.
“On this record, I wanted to go back to that original way of doing things,” Crutchfield continues. “I think that as I grow as a person, and gain perspective and life experience, things that I write will be more acute. I’m evolving and growing as a person, and that sort of voice of me as Waxahatchee is growing with that.”
Perhaps Waxahatchee has not become more honest or autobiographical as she has become more in tune with herself: less apologetic, more confident. At moments where Crutchfield used to put herself down, such as on Ivy Tripp’s “Less Than,” she now talks back, standing up for herself, even to herself. Crutchfield has expressed in past interviews that sadness is central to her albums, but Out in the Storm conveys an assortment of emotions and reactions to the same events—a breakup is among the catalysts for the record.
“There’s a lot of anger and frustration on this album, and I think that there is a lot of hope, too. Even the title Out in the Storm indicates it’s chaos right now, but that’s gonna end, and in that, there’s some hope,” Crutchfield explains. “There’s more coming through than just pure melancholy.”
“There’s a lot of anger and frustration on this album, and I think that there is a lot of hope, too. Even the title Out in the Storm indicates it’s chaos right now, but that’s gonna end, and in that, there’s some hope,” Crutchfield explains. “There’s more coming through than just pure melancholy.”
There is now strength to Crutchfield’s signature sorrow. She allows herself to get angry or frustrated, such as on “Never Wrong,” the record’s purely rock ‘n’ roll opening track, when she firmly declares, “Everyone will hear me complain/ And everyone will pity my pain,” as if she is preluding the multiplicity of feelings she will incorporate into the next nine tracks. Crutchfield indignantly removes herself from a noxious relationship and asserts her independence on tracks like “8 Ball” and “Brass Beam,” but later portrays the vulnerability and weakness that unavoidably merge with that withdrawal. She uncovers a fragile falsetto on “A Little More,” in which she softly admits insecurity and hesitation, singing, “I move delicately/ I slowly choose my words/ And when my presence is felt/ I’ll fly away just like a bird.”