Wine and Cheese: Waxahatchee and Mazzy Star

Country rock and dreamy psychedelia never sounded so good together. Waxahatchee and Mazzy Star are an unexpected duo decades in the making. 

It’s your dream collab. The artists you add back-to-back to the queue. The pairing you can’t get enough of. You know they sound good together, but why? Welcome to Wine and Cheese, a series investigating the why and telling you all about it.

Written by Grace Robertson 

Photos courtesy of Luz Gallardo and Molly Matalon

If Waxahatchee’s confessional, folksy Americana is music for driving windows-down and  road-tripping on a sunny day through the pastures of Alabama and Georgia, then Mazzy Star’s slow, psychedelic folk is for lying in the back of a pickup truck under the clear, open night skies of the South. 

In the early '90s, when Mazzy Star was the most active, male-fronted bands with distorted guitars, punchy vocals, and screeching choruses dominated the alt rock scene. Mazzy Star simplified the complicated production style of the decade by creating a minimalist and distinctly introspective atmosphere with a liberal use of silence, minimal instruments, and fuzzy guitars. Alabama-based indie folk band Waxahatchee would evoke similar feelings and sounds 20 years later. 

If one listens with the heart, and not just the ears, Mazzy Star and Waxahatchee complement each other lyrically and sonically. The two artists explore issues of love and loss with profound introspection that forces the listener to also confront these themes.

Each artist sits at opposite ends of the folk spectrum: Mazzy Star, dreamy and lush psych-pop, and Waxahatchee, Americana-style country, but both offer confessional lyrics and a lean sound. From Hope Sandoval's gentle, shimmering vocals to Katie Crutchfield's rich and layered melodies, the parallels between the two frontwomen grow clearer. 

Mazzy Star’s most successful album, So Tonight That I Might See, captures the band's essence and its emphasis on love, loss, and longing. “Into Dust,” a song composed of guitar and subtle reverb behind Sandoval's haunting vocals, channels an ethereal quality that much of Mazzy Star’s discography offers. The simple guitar plucking grounds the track, but its abstract lyrics pull the listener into Sandoval’s dream world: "It was you / Breathless and torn / I could feel my eyes turning into dust / And two strangers turning into dust / And feel two strangers turning into dust." 

Sandoval describes the feeling of emptiness that stems from losing a loved one and the ever-growing distance between the living and the dead. The band creates a distinctive atmosphere with its dreamy acoustics, but Sandoval's lyrics are unembellished and come-as-you-are. 

The spare production method of David Roback, Mazzy Star's drummer and co-founder, significantly influenced the band's trajectory to mainstream success, especially with "Fade Into You.” The song, a musical exploration of the loss of one's self, garnered mass attention and captured listeners with wistful keys, a slow-strumming guitar, and Sandoval’s country-esque, dreamy gravitas. Every subsequent track on So Tonight That I Might See floats into the next. What keeps the album from growing too abstract or slow is Mazzy Star’s ability to bend genres and step outside soft alt indie norms of traditional pop song structure, heavier bass, and percussion instrumentals.

Waxahatchee frontperson and singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield’s early music was much more abrasive: rock-inspired and headlined by her clear, high voice, but clouded by layers of distortion —  a callback to the ‘90s alt rock aesthetic that Mazzy Star never ventured into. In Crutchfield’s 2020 release, Saint Cloud, she returned to the Southern, warm Americana sound that soundtracked her upbringing. Saint Cloud is a rejection of the artist's earlier post-punk influences, and instead evokes vivid imagery of the South, its lyrics painting visuals of everything from floating lilacs in swimming holes to drives down old roads. However, Crutchfield preserved elements of her earlier classic indie rock essence on tracks like “Oxbow,” a heavily digitized track full of modulating synths and booming drums that prefaces the album's cleaner, classic country sound. Waxahatchee delicately explores similar themes of love and loss in Saint Cloud, the first album Crutchfield wrote after her decision to get sober. Crutchfield delves into a different dimension of loss —  a loss of self, and the forgiveness that she had to extend to herself and others while quitting drinking. Before Saint Cloud, Crutchfield had never written an album while completely sober. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she said she learned how to return to her younger tendencies: being more productive, unlearning old patterns, and embracing her past. While her lyrics are grounded in specific places like the Manhattan subway or an old country road, Crutchfield builds upon her verses with no-nonsense Americana country: a genre whose origins lie in classic Western country with a punky attitude, incorporating everything from bluegrass to roots elements. Crutchfield cited Lucinda Williams, the undisputed queen of the genre, as a major influence for the sound of Saint Cloud. 

Like Sandoval, Crutchfield’s lyricism and dedication to stylistic consistency keeps her music cohesive. Her songs aren’t overly dense or complicated, complementing the works of Mazzy Star perfectly. Both artists, influenced by country and blues and fueled by the sounds of steel guitars and tambourines, maintain a quiet simplicity and steady beat in their music, which makes for a holistic listening experience. On the slow ballad “Arkadelphia,” Crutchfield reaches for an unachievable, idealized version of a friend who overdosed on heroin: "If we make pleasant conversation / I hope you can’t see what’s burning in me / To see a slip as a failure / A balance I couldn’t keep."

Crutchfield’s anchor in her own history doesn’t stop her from exploring emotional revelation and devastation with an intensity and abstractness on par with Sandoval. Driven by three-chord guitars and an upbeat, swinging country rhythm, Waxahatchee's music evokes the atmospheric depth of Mazzy Star with the same minimalist sound.

Saint Cloud is full of allusions to love despite deep loss. On the crux of the album, “Ruby Falls,” Crutchfield details the rise and fall of a friend’s last drug trip and the mourning of a future without her friend in it. In the track, Crutchfield realizes that love forces her to accept others as they are and embrace them regardless of their flaws, even after death. She explores similar themes of growth, and acceptance on tracks like “Lilacs” and “Fire.”

To strip back the layers of obscure production that coat folk music today (think Sufjan Stevens’ army of choir singers, trumpets, harps, sleigh bells, and oboes) and leave nothing but emotional vulnerability takes courage. Women-fronted bands like Mazzy Star set the stage for the next generation of dreamy femme music artists (Lana Del Rey and Lorde, anyone?), while groups like Waxahatchee evoke the timeless sound of Americana folk and spin it into a confessional, warm country anthem. 

Both Waxahatchee and Mazzy Star need nothing but a guitar and a tambourine to reach for untouchable worlds. Although the musical landscape of each differs greatly, both groups carry the same emotional nuance and drive for self-reflection that defines the best of indie folk. They drive down the same country road — Waxahatchee in the harsh light of day, and Mazzy Star at a dusky twilight.