Waxahatchee has today released one of the early contenders for album of the year. Tigers Blood is out now on ANTI- Records. On Tigers Blood we continue to see the wonderful evolution as Katie Crutchfield who emerges as a powerhouse – an ethnologist of the self – forever dedicated to revisiting her wins and losses.
Waxahatchee will be on tour in North America, Europe and the UK this spring and summer in support of Tigers Blood and additionally, has also announced a series of Tigers Blood listening parties, starting this week and hosted at independent record stores worldwide. Listening party details here. European/UK tour dates can be found further below.
Saint Cloud was a breakthrough album for Waxahatchee, and despite being released in the height of the pandemic it entered #1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart & Top 10 on the Emerging Artist chart. It was a welcome musical escape for many and cemented her status as an important voice in the indie-Americana scene. Now with Tigers Blood we see Crutchfield dig even deeper, the result is a complex and beautiful album that is sure to find a special place in people’s hearts once again.
‘Right Back to It‘ is Tigers Blood’s lead single. A nod to country duets like Gram and Emmylou, winding over a steadfast banjo from Phil Cook. Together, Crutchfield and MJ Lenderman harmonise on the chorus: “I’ve been yours for so long/We come right back to it/I let my mind run wild/Don’t know why I do it/But you just settle in/Like a song with no end.” Crutchfield says it’s the first real love song she’s ever written.
The song ‘Bored‘ opens with blase drum beats from Spencer Tweedy that crash under Crutchfield as she throws her voice high: “I can get along/ My spine’s a rotted two by four/Barely hanging on/My benevolence just hits the floor.” Lenderman’s scuzzy riffs and Nick Bockrath’s climbing pedal steel add power to the album’s most ‘Southern Rock’ a la Drive-By Truckers moment.
‘365‘ is a story of recognition told from a hard-won place of self-acceptance/forgiveness. Crutchfield initially started writing it for Wynonna Judd, with whom she has written and performed in the past, until the lyrics started hitting closer and closer to home. The writer Annie Ernaux says, “writing is to fight forgetting.” Like Lucinda Williams, Crutchfield’s lyrics are memoir. Throughout Tigers Blood Crutchfield is addressing a “you,” but the ‘you’ in ‘365’ evokes raw closeness, vulnerability. “Ya ain’t had much luck but grace is/In the eye of the beholder/And I had my own ideas but/I carried you on my shoulders, anyways.” ‘365’ is essentially Tigers Blood’s aria about addiction, with little to no accompaniment to Crutchfield’s voice. Her backing band is hushed, as if the spotlight’s coming down on her, alone on the stage, giving her testimony. Crutchfield slings her voice with arresting precision, reaching its highest harmony on the whole album. “So when you kill, I kill/And when you ache, I ache/And we both haunt this old lifeless town/And when you fail, I fail/ When you fly, I fly/And it’s a long way to come back down.”
‘365’ circles back to the beginning of Tigers Blood, where Crutchfield’s words ring clear as a bell. Album opener ‘3 Sisters‘ starts with Crutchfield singing over hymn-like piano chords: “I pick you up inside a hopeless prayer/I see you beholden to nothing/I make a living crying it ain’t fair/And not budging.” Tigers Blood is Crutchfield at her most confident and resilient. Staring straight at the truth, forgiving but not forgetting, not batting an eye.
1. 3 Sisters
2. Evil Spawn
3. Ice Cold
4. Right Back To It
5. Burns Out At Midnight
6. Bored
7. Lone Star Lake
8. Crimes Of The Heart
9. Crowbar
10. 365
11. The Wolves
12. Tigers Blood
LISTEN HERE:
https://waxahatchee.ffm.to/tigersblood
Photo credit – Molly Matalon