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Waxahatchee Returns To Her Folk Roots With 'Chapel Of Pines'

As Katie Crutchfield's songwriting has evolved, so has her sense of sound, in the arrangements that bloomed in Waxahatchee's Ivy Tripp and the distorted volume of Out in the Storm. You can still find her playing these new songs solo, baring the edges of cutting-but-kind lyricism in live settings — but it's been a while since Crutchfield's gone into the studio with a stripped-down intimacy in mind.

The Great Thunder EP re-imagines songs written between Cerulean Salt and Ivy Tripp with the noisier, stranger (and now-dormant) band Great Thunder. "Chapel of Pines," paired with a folkloric and ritualistic video featuring frequent tour mate Kevin Morby, definitely calls back to Waxahatchee's roots, as Crutchfield's country lilt leans into the spare strum of her acoustic guitar. Even if it had been written a few albums ago, her wandering and questioning spirit is wrapped around "Chapel of Pines" like twine on twigs, summoning something ancient to make sense of what's to come: "If you build yourself up tall you can tell me what the future holds / Will you settle where you stand or keep it to yourself?"


Waxahatchee's Great Thunder EP comes out Sept.7 via Merge Records.

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