Mixtape 114 • Can't Do Much
Katie Crutchfield, performing as Waxahatchee, has been slowly and steadily building her repertoire and now her talent is overflowing her banks.
Katie Crutchfield, performing as Waxahatchee, has been slowly and steadily building her repertoire and now her talent is overflowing her banks.
It was a peaceful suburban street, and they had taken great care to select a vehicle that would not stand out when parked along its sidewalks, a gold Taurus wagon. The very familiar nature of the setting — the shading trees, the mottled but well-kept asphalt, the toys scattered on lawns — made it feel like one of the most exotic places they’d been to in a while. The cartographer checked the coordinates on the fancy device strapped to their wrist, but any web search could have found them Brewster, New York. The ethnomusicologist leaned against the mailbox, labeled “Marie”, and scanned the canopy of the tremendous spreading oak planted square in the middle of the lawn, eyes peeled for that squirrel.
The Sasha river was running dry, and the aerialist maneuvered his craft to take advantage of the fact. As they moved swiftly along the crumbling banks, exoskeletal legs easily scrabbling over the terrain in an unearthly three-limbed gait, they encountered sun-baked sections where a trickle fed a series of pools on the cracking river bottom, animals congregated around them in a temporary truce. They hadn’t seen a human since Saturday, a fact that concerned the actuary more than the dry river, and the attempted distraction of some Guatemalan gamelan techno was not working. In its steel box, the package of Peanut Butter Crunch patiently rustled and awaited its delivery.
A listener suggested I slip in Wham!’s “Last Christmas” but as someone filled with old-fashioned Lacking Integrity, I politely declined. That said, your host survived the season unscathed. In this episode, we dedicate the Middle Hour to some fine covers. Shout out to Robin in Atlanta for hanging out in the late-night post-holiday gulch.
Smart guitar pop never goes out of style, and sharp lyrics make it all the better.
One-man band Tom Hauck is Telamor, with a variety of songs that sounds like they were lifted straight out of ‘80s college radio