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Tigers Blood is Waxahatchee’s Latest Triumph of Radical, Clear-Eyed Honesty

On her sixth album, Katie Crutchfield teams up with MJ Lenderman, the Cook brothers and Spencer Tweedy to create hard-won and time-worn brilliance.

By Tom Williams  |  March 22, 2024 | 10:00am
Music Reviews Waxahatchee
Tigers Blood is Waxahatchee’s Latest Triumph of Radical, Clear-Eyed Honesty

“I make a living crying, it ain’t fair and not budging,” declares Katie Crutchfield towards the beginning of “3 Sisters,” the brilliant opener to Tigers Blood, her sixth LP as Waxahatchee. The track begins nearly-acapella before bursting into a rousing sing-along midway through its runtime—a fitting and bitingly self-aware sentiment to kick off the album, with Crutchfield now 13 years removed from her 2012 lo-fi debut, American Weekend—which kick-started a prolific streak of albums that turned anxiety, self-doubt and restlessness into indie-rock and Americana gold.

On American Weekend, Crutchfield sang directly to the trials and tribulations of being a 22-year-old clinging to toxic relationships and finding solace in substances. Then, on Cerulean Salt, her critical breakthrough the following year, she ratcheted up both the stakes and her sound to confront many of the same themes. That album—dark, melodic and often imposing in it’s forthright, anxious meditations—found a 24-year-old Crutchfield already mournful for a bygone halcyon day (“I’m longing for my youth / You were lively then, too,” she declared on the melancholic and resigned “Lively”).

Sorrow, and its exacerbators—primarily depicted via unhealthy relationships and binge-drinking in Waxahatchee’s work—made for exacting music that delivered emotional gut punch after gut punch. But it was clear that the road Crutchfield was heading down was unsustainable—both personally and sonically, as Crutchfield’s alt-rock sound was getting progressively more bombastic with each release. After 2017’s Out in the Storm and the tour that followed, Crutchfield realised she needed a change—resulting in a newfound sobriety and a subsequent shift towards Americana, which resulted in what was then her best album to date, Saint Cloud.

This backstory is important, because every Waxahatchee album following American Weekend has sounded indebted to and informed by its predecessor. Tigers Blood, in particular, is an album in-conversation with the past, seeking from it lessons that allow us a more peaceful present. On “3 Sisters,” Crutchfield attempts to find alignment between two states—between her slower, smoother present-day and an unsteady past. Like with much of Tigers Blood, Crutchfield doesn’t find an easy middle-ground between the two, but she remains admirably committed to navigating the conflict with a radical, clear-eyed honesty.

“Right Back To It,” Tiger Blood’s lead single featuring guitar virtuoso Jake “MJ” Lenderman, is the closest thing the new LP has in terms of a spiritual successor to the album it’s following up. Warm harmonies shared between Lenderman and Crutchfield—as well as pleasingly melodic banjo and guitar melodies—evoke the irresistible charms of Saint Cloud, while clearly baring the rangy, Southern tendencies of Lenderman’s Carolina influence. Despite lyrics alluding to a relentlessly restless mind, the song exudes inner peace, with the past becoming a source of comfort rather than consternation. If Saint Cloud and its lead single “Fire” captured the initial “pink cloud” of sobriety (and all the nervous anticipation that comes with it), then “Right Back To It” showcases the well-earned euphoria that comes from settling in to being clean long-term.

But Tigers Blood doesn’t merely represent the natural progression from Saint Cloud or ring in a sober celebration. In fact, it reads as the triumphant culmination of every album Waxahatchee has released up until this point. Country and folk influences like Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams remain apparent here as they did four years ago, but also apparent are the rock stylings of Cerulean Salt and Out in the Storm. “Bored,” which is the most anthemic Crutchfield tune since “Never Been Wrong,” is dominated by a driving percussion courtesy of Spencer Tweedy and Nick Bockrath’s pedal steel guitar licks. After penning so many self-lacerating songs in the 2010s, there’s something unmistakably satisfying about seeing Crutchfield turn her frustrations outwards here. “I can get along, my spine’s a rotted two-by-four / My benevolence just hits the floor / I get bored,” she declares, somehow sounding both exasperated and above-it-all at the same time.

“Bored” is one of many moments that showcase the importance of Lenderman’s contributions to the album, as his electric guitar playing significantly sharpens the edges of the music altogether. On “Ice Cold,” he turns ruminations on a lost relationship into an exhilarating rock tune, while on “Evil Spawn” he accentuates the frenetic energy established by Crutchfield’s lyricism—which could be read as concerning a troubled relationship with either another person or with alcohol (“What you were holding so close, calls you by name / What you thought was enough, now seems insane”).

On Saint Cloud, Crutchfield saved her two slowest and most mournful tracks (“Arkadelphia” and “Ruby Falls”) for the LP’s final leg—something she does again on Tigers Blood. Kicking off side two, “Lone Star Lake” offers a portrait of a lost-soul Crutchfield attempts to reassure via a visit “to the only lake in Kansas.” Meanwhile, “365” delivers sparse meditations on addiction, and the moving, slow-burn “The Wolves” confronts the spectre of sacrificing one’s own sanity in the pursuit of cementing a creative legacy that will outlive you.

But it’s on the album’s closing title track where all the themes that Crutchfield spends the album considering collide—making peace with both the past and the present, alternating between comfort and unease and finding solace in others at one moment while reaching your wits end with them the other. Tigers Blood ends with a stark declaration: “You got every excuse, but it’s an eerie sound / When that siren blows, rings out all over town.” It would be an unnerving final note if it wasn’t for the line being delivered via Crutchfield, as she soothingly harmonizes with Lenderman, Phil and Brad Cook, Natalie Chernitsky and Tweedy. Instead, the enduring message is that there’s no tribulation that can’t be overcome with unwavering honesty and durable companionship—a hard-won and time-worn truth that also happens to translate into brilliant music.

 
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