ALBUM OF THE MONTH: Tiger's Blood
A masterpiece from a songwriter I tragically wrote off but am now, miraculously, writing about.
Today is March, 20, 2024. This is a screenshot of the front page of today’s New York Times.
I have not yet heard Tiger’s Blood, the forthcoming album from redeemed songwriter Waxahatchee. The strength of the album’s three singles, however, has convinced me it will be an album of the year contender.
Consider this me hedging a bet that I’ll love it so much, I’ll be writing about it at some point in the future.
If this is never sent out to you, this incorrect prediction is a taste maker’s ultimate shame that I will take to my grave.
If this is sent to you, dear readers, well, points for me.
While I can’t speak on the album yet, I can (and will) talk about my foolish life choices surrounding my Waxahatchee fandom.
Give or take a decade ago, there was an explosion of promising debuts from not-quite singer songwriting femmes in the indie music scene. Sharon Van Etten, Waxahatchee, Angel Olson, Mitski, St. Vincent, Courtney Barnett, the list goes on. I tend to go wide and deep with the genres I enjoy and so I feel the need to be very selective in the artists I follow. At that time, I didn’t know any better, so I chose a handful from the scene (Sharon Van Etten and St. Vincent) as my flag bearers for the genre.
Lo and behold, my choices have yielded…not rotten but bland and uneven tasting fruit. Aside from one huge song, Sharon Van Etten has proved to be a snooze for me. St. Vincent was much more rewarding, though the last two albums were clunkers. (Here’s hoping St. Vincent kicking Jack Antonoff to the curb helps her get back on track. Jack Antonoff hater soft-launch.)
All the while, one Katie Crutchfield was releasing album after album of twanged, raw, bleeding music. I enjoyed Ivy Tripp, the only album I gave any real time, but nothing grabbed me and she fell off my radar. Years went by and then, for some reason, I decided to give St. Cloud a listen last year. That early sampling could not have prepared me for the fucking WALLOP that was St. Cloud. And then, she had the audacity to add three more jewels to her austere, folksy crown on St Cloud +3. Those three songs were the final drops in the proverbial bucket: I became a Waxahatchee stan.
And so, as a stan, I patiently wait for Tiger’s Blood.
Well, dear readers, points for me.
Today is April 18th, 2024, nearly a month after I started writing this. This is a screenshot of today’s front page of the New York Times.
Last month, I said some albums just need to be a collection of great songs. In the month since…I’ve averaged at least one listen per day of Tiger’s Blood and, let me tell you, it is a collection of near-perfect songs. Depending on the day, there is one song that I can take or leave and all the rest are magic. The singles aren’t even the best songs on the album!!! A green flag!!!
Many publications (publications I love!) have called Tiger’s Blood a kind of…St. Cloud 2.0. They say it lovingly but I find it frustrating and I imagine Katie Crutchfield finds it annoying! It’s flattening and does a disservice to wonder and divinity of Tiger’s Blood. Much like Javelin, my number two album from last year, Tiger’s Blood is a stunning monument to Katie’s entire artistic life.
Most of recent Waxahatchee narrative has been Katie’s transition to a sober life and how she wants to obliterate the tortured artist trope. She isn’t shy to talk about how St. Cloud was her first album sans booze and how challenging it was to write without inebriated aid for the first time in her career. What she created was a sparse, gorgeous, singular album. I could also hear how painstaking, how isolated the album’s creation process was for her. It’s minimal and stark; listening to it, I picture Katie in a field of lilacs, the sun purging away the shadows of her old life.
Tiger’s Blood, on the other hand…plays like a party. But not like… a rager where obliteration is the goal. It’s the ideal house party in every shape it could take: a group sing-a-long moment, a couch make-out, a quiet conversation in the corner, the calm before the storm, an evening ending transcendent sing-a-long.
Let’s zoom in on some of these moments, shall we?
At first listen, ‘Crowbar’ sounds like a sunny little love ditty. Riffing off what sounds like the bass line from ‘Pumped Up Kicks’, it’s all acoustic strum, Katie crooning in that honeyed drawl, gorgeous harmonies swelling up at the chorus. After the, oh, let’s say fiftieth time listening, I feel it’s the smartest song on the album. The sunny ditty masks lyrical discontent: a story of a fragile lover, deeply wounded feelings, a laugh that could destroy a relationship. The chorus goes:
You can take it pretty far on a prayer that's pale and synthetic/
Bending my crowbar with tension that's telekinetic/
A paradox poetic, you get choked up reading the classics/
Your pride'll take a gluttonous bite/
A stupid question, I'd rather not ask it.
That telekinetic tension Katie sings about is mirrored in the structural tension between the bright songwriting and compromising lyrics. The song is a coy smirk, open to new interpretations with every listen and I can’t get enough of it.
On the flip side, I can only listen to the title track, ‘Tiger’s Blood’, so many times before I’m cracked open beyond repair. (Sidebar: the confidence to put the title track at the end of the album. So many artist’s bury them in the middle, as if embarrassed by their lack of creativity in titles, but this track is the summation of everything that comes before it and is, appropriately, our finale.) Over a lilting waltz, Katie sings of past memories as though tapped into the eternal. In a cultural moment where lyricists are literal to the point of boredom, the song is deliciously metaphorical and evanescent. It’s intoxicating and Katie knows it. As the song ends, for the first time in her career, a full-ass chorus joins her to sing the chorus as it fades away, everyone coming in to taste the juice, to hold onto that fleeting memory.
Having done this Waxahatchee deep dive over the last year, I’ve been keenly aware of loneliness seeped into her music. While she started out writing from the dark corners of her home, it’s just as isolating meditating sobriety on her truck’s hood.
With Tiger’s Blood, there is immense warmth, an easy geniality to the album. House party energy. Katie has not only overcome any hint of torture in her artistry, she has gifted us a balm for our own struggles. I’m listening to the title track again (the fourth time today) and I’m moved nearly to tears as Katie graciously, beautifully welcomes us into her home. I never want to leave.
If you don’t listen to any other album I write about this year, if you only give my recommendation’s one shot: let it be this one.
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Waxahats off!!