Waxahatchee have announced the Great Thunder EP, a title longtime fans will recognize as the name of one of Katie Crutchfield’s old bands with Swearin’/Waxahatchee member Keith Spencer. Our first preview is “Chapel of Pines,” a song Waxahatchee have performed live for a number of years. It’s now received an official studio recording and a video, co-starring Crutchfield and Kevin Morby as plain-dressed wanderers on a supernatural prairie.
The songs on the Great Thunder EP find Crutchfield at once taking a step forward and a step back: They were written around the same time as two earlier Waxahatchee albums, 2013’s Cerulean Salt and 2015’s Ivy Tripp, but she and producer Brad Cook revived and reworked the material more recently at Justin Vernon’s April Base recording studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Waxahatchee’s latest album was last summer’s Out in the Storm, which saw Crutchfield and her full band embracing a louder, more confident live sound. Great Thunder is more intimate and hushed: “I would say that it is a complete 180 from the last record: super stripped-down, quiet, and with me performing solo, it’s a throwback to how I started,” Crutchfield said in a statement. “Overall, the EP is a warm, kind of vibey recording.”
Waxahatchee’s Great Thunder EP arrives September 7 from Merge. Watch the video for “Chapel Pines,” directed by Christopher Good, and see the EP details below. Waxahatchee are preparing for some fall solo shows, dates for which you can see at Merge’s website, as well as an upcoming tour with Courtney Barnett.
