Waxahatchee review, Band on the Wall, Manchester: Carefully honed set ranges from breezy pop to rambunctious punk

Katie Crutchfield doesn’t say much between songs to a packed-out Band on the Wall tonight.

You suspect, by now, that she’s happy to let this particular setlist do the talking for her. She’s in the thick of a European victory lap in support of Out in the Storm, her wonderfully rough-and-ready fourth LP under the Waxahatchee moniker, and anybody who caught her on the other side of Manchester last September at The Deaf Institute will be able to attest to the degree to which she and her band seem to have grown into the noisy rock roles that the album has cast them in.

The show opens on a hushed note, with Crutchfield dusting off a deep cut from one of her other projects, Great Thunder; she plays the lilting "Chapel of Pines" on her own, with an acoustic guitar. From then on, her backing band - which includes twin sister Allison on keys - arrive to flesh the lineup out to a four-piece, and they rattle into a raw take on the deeply confessional "Recite Remorse’" its droning synths giving way at the midpoint to feedback-drenched guitars.

A slew of material from Out in the Storm follows in the same vein - a rambunctious take on "Silver", a noisy punk run through the Breeders-esque "Never Been Wrong’" and an impassioned "Sparks Fly" - and when Crutchfield does dig into the back catalogue, she picks tracks that complement her latest record’s ramshackle energy; moodier moments from her 2013 breakthrough Cerulean Salt are foregone in favour of the breezy likes of "Coast to Coast" and "Peace and Quiet", whilst airy pop highlights "La Loose" and "Under a Rock" are plucked from Ivy Tripp.

Long-standing fans might have been let down by the total dearth of representation for debut effort American Weekend, but you get the impression Crutchfield has honed this set carefully over the course of the past year; closing with stripped-back Out in the Storm closer "Fade" for a one-song encore feels like a fork in the road as she brings the album’s promotional campaign to a close. Whichever way she goes next, it’ll be worth keeping a close eye on.