Once a Philadelphian, always a Philadelphian: New music from Waxahatchee and Rosali, plus Nicki Minaj in South Philly.
Katie Crutchfield and Rosali Middleman thrived in the Philly music scene before moving on. They both have stunning new albums.
Philly’s indie-rock scene has nurtured many acts in recent years that have gone on to national and international prominence. Some, like Kurt Vile, have stayed home. Others, such as The War On Drugs and Japanese Breakfast, mostly don’t live here anymore, but maintain strong connections with the city.
Two standout women in the latter category — Waxahatchee and Rosali — have just released brand-new, top-notch albums that find them at the top of their game.
Most prominent is Tiger’s Blood from Katie Crutchfield’s increasingly Americana-leaning Waxahatchee.
Crutchfield grew up in Alabama and spent the better part of a decade in Philly after moving here with her twin sister, Allison, in the early 2010s. She recorded three stellar career-building albums in that time, the most recent being 2017′s Out in the Storm.
She now lives in Kansas with her partner, Kevin Morby, but expressed her Philly-allegiance last year by singing a Willie Nelson song with the Eagles’ Lane Johnson on A Philly Special Christmas Special. And she’s closing out her 2024 tour with shows at the Fillmore on Sept. 7 and 8.
Following up 2020′s St. Cloud, the first Waxahatchee album recorded after Crutchfield got sober, Tiger’s Blood is even more confident, a fetching set that contends with the pitfalls and contradictions of adulthood with melodic grace. Produced with Brad Cook, it featured MJ Lenderman, the North Carolina songwriter who plays guitar and sings harmony on the gorgeous single “Right Back to It” and throughout the album.
Not so widely known as Waxahatchee is Rosali Middleman, the songwriter and guitarist who records as Rosali. She’s originally from Michigan and moved to North Carolina in 2021, but the decade before then found her transfixing, Neil Young-adjacent sound in a collaborative circle that included Fishtown bands like The War On Drugs, Purling Hiss, and harpist Mary Lattimore.
Bite Down, Rosalie’s first album for Merge Records, is a powerful folk rock record full of quiet-starting songs like “On Tonight,” the title track that takes time to build to magisterial grandeur. Dan Bejar of Destroyer doesn’t play on the album, but he’s a fanboy who wrote the album notes, raving about the band’s “staggeringly beautiful” playing. Rosali comes back to Philly to play Johnny Brenda’s on April 13.
This week, in case you need reminding, is Beyoncé week: Queen Bey’s countrified Cowboy Carter is scheduled for release on Friday. But there’s also another big-time pop star arriving in town that day: Nicki Minaj is playing the Wells Fargo Center. The Trinidad-born rapper is touring behind her 2023 album Pink Friday 2, and of course played a key role on the Barbie soundtrack, with “Barbie World,” a collaboration with Ice Spice.
Other notable shows this week: The Mavericks’ Raul Malo crooning at Sellersville Theater on Thursday and jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan at Ardmore Music Hall that same night.
On Friday, English singer-songwriter Arlo Parks is at Union Transfer, and Canadian pop sophisticate Andy Shauf plays Arden Gild Hall in Delaware. And on Saturday, punk jazz trio The Messthetics team with sax player James Brandon Lewis in what ought to be a wild show at Solar Myth.
And one more Philly music note: Jazmine Sullivan, the Strawberry Mansion-raised R&B singer who had her biggest success yet with Heaux Tales in 2022, is headed back on the road. She’s joining headliner Maxwell on the “Serenade Tour,” which comes to the Wells Fargo Center on Sept. 24. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, March 29, at musze.com.