Hear Waxahatchee's Sweet New Saint Cloud Single, "Can't Do Much"

These are dark times, but we at least have a new Waxahatchee record to look forward to: Katie Crutchfield’s Saint Cloud is out next Friday, March 27, coronavirus be damned, and today (March 16) brings our latest preview of the album, honky-tonk love song “Can’t Do Much.”

“This was the first song I wrote in this batch of songs, and I’ve been performing it live for almost two years. It’s meant to be an extremely unsentimental love song, a love song with a strong dose of reality,” Crutchfield explains in a statement. “It was written early on in a relationship, where the feelings were super intense, but also fear or apprehension were sort of keeping me from totally relaxing in it yet. Sort of like ‘it’s annoying that I love you so much’—totally unromantic, which sort of makes it really romantic to me.”

It may not be sentimental, per se, but “Can’t Do Much” is tupelo honey-sweet: Crutchfield croons, “I want you all the time / Sanity, nullified,” as if stating a fact, rather than expressing her feelings, yet the song is all the more romantic for it. Twang-tinged guitars and trebly chords take a backseat to Crutchfield’s wonderful voice, which conveys the song’s ample emotional vulnerability as well as all the confidence and clarity of a church bell.

Hear Waxahatchee’s Sweet New Saint Cloud Single, “Can’t Do Much”