Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud

The Guardian 100

(Merge Records)
With tracks that nestle in heartache and bask in hard-won wisdom, this is an artefact of American song that measures up to Dylan at his peak

According to the title of her previous album, Alabama songwriter Katie Crutchfield was Out in the Storm, playing breakup songs with a hulking rhythm section. On the follow-up, she sounds like she’s out the other side of it, more or less.

With the wind dropped and the air cleared, Crutchfield has turned away from indie-rock entirely to embrace the Americana and country-rock of her native region, and in so doing has made the best album of the year so far. Aided by unfussy, clean but never sterile production by Brad Cook – and perhaps the sobriety she has recently embraced – the haze has lifted and her songwriting can really be seen.

Pitchfork 87

With a shift in tone and tempo, Katie Crutchfield creates a vivid modern classic of folk and Americana. It’s the sound of a cherished songwriter thawing out under the sun.

The Guardian 60

(Merge)

Sobriety can smooth any artist’s fuzzy edges. Named after the Alabama creek that runs behind her childhood home, Katie Crutchfield, AKA Waxahatchee, ditched alcohol for good before making her fifth album, Saint Cloud, which sees her sound leap from reverb-laden indie rock to glossy, radio-friendly country. But even though her work has become progressively hi-fi since her scratchy, Cat Power-like 2012 debut American Weekend, there’s a sharpness in these songs that still unsettles.

It’s there in Crutchfield’s vocals, louder and fiercer than before, and on songs such as Fire, which is also difficult to love. Her lyrics, tackling subjects including addiction and self-hatred, often feel too verbose, but they become surprising and refreshing on closer listen. Can’t Do Much is an intense, jittery love song with a great opening couplet: “We will coalesce our heaven and hell / My eyes roll around like dice on the felt.” Lilacs despairs of a girl who has harmful inner monologues (“I run it like a silent movie / I run it like a violent song”). Arkadelphia feels like a Bruce Springsteen narrative with its fires restoked for today’s troubled thirtysomethings. This album has a bloodied, ambitious heart on its sleeve. It wants the world to hear it beating.