Katie Crutchfield, Waxahatchee’s principle songwriter, singer, and instrumentalist, has not simply made a good album on her group’s latest, Ivy Tripp. She has made a Great one. Capital G.
Whereas earlier Waxahatchee records tended to wade around in the shallows of lovelorn ennui and songwriter-y redemption, her new songs dive into the deep end of emotions easier felt than explained. And not only do they keep their heads above water, but the new tunes frolic. Swim. Her compositions stretch out and embrace not knowing what lies beneath. There is a refreshing uncertainty to these tunes and their message, anything and everything available at any moment, and what might result dangerous or rapturous. Or both.
The exploration starts immediately, with the Earth-shaking keyboard that opens leadoff track “Breathless.” The song sounds like nothing Waxahatchee has released before, and it puts listeners on notice that this is a new record with a new vision. Not just a new sound, but a new approach. Her voice is as sharp as ever, and the songs are more well-rounded now, their delivery and instrumentation more varied. On “La Loose,” Crutchfield moons over the feeling of booty-calling an old lover not as something hopeless or depressing, but rather light and airy. The story usually goes more along the lines of use and discarding; Waxahatchee’s version is one of good feeling not discussed. Floating keyboard figures punctuated by “Oh oh oh ooooooooh”s glide atop a shuffling electronic rhythm guaranteed to make your head bob as Crutchfield sings in falsetto of love neither labeled nor acknowledged for fear it will disappear:
“My thoughtful consort/When the stars are holding court, We will be in another world/Where my clarity’s restored, This charming picture of/Hysteria in love, It could fade or wrinkle up/I don’t hold faith in much, I know that I feel more than you do
I selfishly want you here to stick to, And I’ll try to preserve the routine, I don’t want to discuss what it means, You’re the only one I want watching me”
Time again throughout Ivy Tripp, this sensibility stands out, and Crutchfield wields her whimsy like a samurai sword. Over the course of the album, her lyrical deftness and compositional alacrity trigger lightness in the listener. The observations are garden variety only insofar as people who lead a certain lifestyle should be able to relate, but they’re never simple. She doesn’t take a tack that leads where fans might expect. Furthermore and best of all, it’s beyond a “feminine perspective”: it’s a human one, and these songs imbue a very real feeling of mixed-up yet blissed-out emotion.
Previously prone to ironic detachment and despairing lamentation over wry guitar-and-drums, Waxahatchee ’s new songs build on that foundation and rise far higher than before. A mid-tempo observational hymn can only go so far with a distorted guitar and uncomplicated drumbeat, no matter what the lyrical message; Crutchfield and her collaborators realized this, so they’ve searched far and wide to find new ideas and structures for this new message of resolution, hope, and acceptance.
Of Modern Love, really. Nothing more, and nothing less, but something requiring more than a fuzzed-out Fender and a moody hi-hat/snare to celebrate.
The fact that this is the first Waxahatchee album to feature Crutchfield’s picture on the cover isn’t an accident, either. These are the songs, and this is the sound, of an Artist in full. Of a creativity risen beyond the trappings of the “indie darling” to become something much more important and realized. Of ownership, and so identification. These are mine, the album cover says. Hi, how are you?
There is a tendency in male-dominated rock criticism, and male-dominant music culture, to see female artists as constructs or objects. It’s always “girl power” instead of real power, or something men want to fall in love with instead of someone in need of love herself. On the two previous Waxahatchee records, it was almost too easy to write Crutchfield off as another woman doing the same thing a million other women in Brooklyn or Austin or Portland or wherever were doing, as opposed to appreciating her art on its own terms. With Ivy Tripp, Crutchfield steps out of the boxes someone else might make for her and her art to produce real beauty, and not just a feminine kind.
This Ivy Tripp is a real motherfucker. Whatever you thought Waxahatchee was before, prepare to update that opinion.
Rating: 5/5