Waxahatchee

What do we hold on to from our past? What must we let go of to truly move forward?
Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, a lyricist who has always let her listeners know exactly where she is
at a given moment, spent much of 2018 reckoning with these questions and revisiting her roots to
look for answers. The result is Saint Cloud, an intimate journey through the places she’s been, filled
with the people she’s loved.

Written immediately in the period following her decision to get sober, the album is an unflinching
self-examination. From a moment of reckoning in Barcelona to a tourist trap in Tennessee to a
painful confrontation on Arkadelphia Road, from a nostalgic jaunt down 7th Street in New York City
to the Mississippi Gulf, Crutchfield creates a sense of place for her soul-baring tales, a longtime staple
of her storytelling.

This raw, exposed narrative terrain is aided by a shift in sonic arrangements as well. While her last
two records featured the kind of big guitars, well-honed noise, and battering sounds that
characterized her Philadelphia scene and strongly influenced a burgeoning new class of singer-
songwriters, Saint Cloud strips back those layers to create space for Crutchfield’s voice and lyrics. The
result is a classic Americana sound with modern touches befitting an artist who has emerged as one
of the signature storytellers of her time.

From the origins of her band name—the beloved creek behind her childhood home—to scene-setting
classics like “Noccalula” and “Sparks Fly,” listening to Waxahatchee has always felt like being invited
along on a journey with a steely-eyed navigator. On Saint Cloud, Crutchfield adds a new sense of
perspective to her travels. Reflecting on this, she says, “I think all of my records are turbulent and
emotional, but this one feels like it has a little dose of enlightenment. It feels a little more calm and
less reckless.”

Many of the narratives on Saint Cloud concern addiction and the havoc it wreaks on ourselves and
our loved ones, as Crutchfield comes to a deeper understanding of love not only for those around her
but for herself. This coalesces most clearly on “Fire,” which she says was literally written in transit,
during a drive over the Mississippi River into West Memphis, and serves as a love song to herself, a
paean to moving past shame into a place of unconditional self-acceptance. Coming from a songwriter
long accustomed to looking in other directions for love, it’s a stirring moment when Crutchfield sings,
“I take it for granted/If I could love you unconditionally/I could iron out the edges of the darkest
sky.”

Which is not to say that Saint Cloud lacks Crutchfield’s signature poetry on matters of romantic love.
Still, her personal evolution in this area is evident too, as this time around, Crutchfield examines what
it really means to be with someone and how it feels to see our own patterns more clearly. On “Hell,”
she sings: “I hover above like a deity/But you don’t worship me, you don’t worship me/You strip the
illusion, you did it well/I’ll put you through hell.”

Crutchfield also looks at what it’s like to be romantically involved with another artist, someone in
search of their own truth, on “The Eye”: “Our feet don’t ever touch the ground/Run ourselves ragged
town to town/Chasing uncertainty around, a siren sound” and “We leave love behind without a tear
or a long goodbye/as we wait for lightning to strike/We are enthralled by the calling of the eye.”
And of course, even when Crutchfield is taking a more nuanced approach to love, her ease with all-
encompassing sentiments is still clear, with lines like “I give it to you all on a dime/I love you till the
day I die” which sound culled from a classic torch song.

Over the course of Saint Cloud’s 11 songs, which were recorded in the summer of 2019 at Sonic
Ranch in Tornillo, TX, and Long Pond in Stuyvesant, NY, and produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Big
Red Machine), Crutchfield peels back the distortion of electric guitars to create a wider sonic palette
than on any previous Waxahatchee album. It is a record filled with nods to classic country (like the
honky tonk ease of “Can’t Do Much”), folk-inspired tones (heard in the confessional lilt of “St. Cloud”),
and distinctly modern touches (like the pulsating minimalism of “Fire”).
To bolster her vision, Crutchfield enlisted Bobby Colombo and Bill Lennox, both of the Detroit-based
band Bonny Doon, to serve as her backing band on the record, along with Josh Kaufman (Hiss Golden
Messenger, Bonny Light Horseman) on guitar and keyboards and Nick Kinsey (Kevin Morby, Elvis
Perkins) on drums and percussion. Bonny Doon will also perform as Crutchfield’s live band during
her extensive tours planned for 2020, which include the US and Europe.

Saint Cloud marks the beginning of a journey for Crutchfield, one that sees her leaving behind past
vices and the comfortable environs of her Philadelphia scene to head south in search of something
new. If on her previous work Crutchfield was out in the storm, she’s now firmly in the eye of it, taking
stock of her past with a clear perspective and gathering the strength to carry onward.
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Saint Cloud will be released on March 27th on Merge Records.