Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield has revealed that she doesn’t like making blanket statements anymore. In an interview with NME from a London studio, Crutchfield said that she was tempted to divide her career into two parts- before and after her breakout 2020 album, ‘Saint Cloud’. However, she doesn’t want to deal in absolutes, having already contradicted everything she’s ever said she’d do creatively.
Crutchfield’s first album, ‘American Weekend’, was released as Waxahatchee in 2012 after her rock band P.S. Eliot broke up. The album presented a deeply vulnerable and diaristic form of storytelling with a spare instrumentation and endearing lo-fi production. The albums that followed, ‘Cerulean Salt’ and ‘Out In The Storm’, beefed up the sonics of Waxahatchee but kept her firmly in the indie-rock lane.
In contrast, ‘Saint Cloud’ ushered in a new, breezy sound that took her back to the country music of her childhood in Alabama. Its story of getting sober and slowing down in life struck an immediate chord in a quarantined world. The album saw Crutchfield work with producer Brad Cook for the first time, whom she calls “the important collaborator of my life”.
Crutchfield and Cook considered a shiny, synth-heavy pop record for ‘Tiger’s Blood’ to veer in a completely different direction, but both felt that they didn’t want people to think, ‘Oh, they made one good record!’ Crutchfield reflects that there is a weird pressure to reinvent yourself with every record, but she’s just trying to elevate the songs the best she can. ‘Tiger’s Blood’ represents a subtle shift in her lyric writing, sifting through the aftermath of seismic shifts and examining the things that continue to slowly change even when your life stands somewhat still.
‘Tiger’s Blood’ continues the gorgeous and tasteful evolution of Waxahatchee. It takes her further towards timelessness, and she committed to making something that’s going to stay. Waxahatchee’s ‘Tiger’s Blood’ was released on March 22 through ANTI-
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