Album Review: Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood

If you’re not living, then you’re dying.

At some point, in early 2017, when I was still working in a bookstore, I had discovered, and then, as the year progressed, found myself becoming both enthralled and at least temporarily obsessed with The Book of Disquiet. It’s a difficult book to try and explain, and the brief Wikipedia entry about it refers to it as a “literary project,” which is pretty accurate. 

Published posthumously  in 1982, some 50 years after the death of its author, Fernando Pessoa, you could also try, and not do it justice, by referring to it as a “book within a book.” It’s dense, and complicated, and operates within a number of layers that, if I am recalling it correctly, are very easy to get a little turned around within. 

What I remember about it, though, or what really stayed with me, is the kind of bleak outlook parts of it have—there are sections of it that are, quite honestly, not very accessible or are difficult to get through, but within the first portion, what I appreciated was the candor, or the voice, that the narrator spoke with—a kind of matter-of-fact nihilism that, at the time, on the cusp of turning 35 and slowly making my way out of a long, severely depressive state, but still being, you know, a depressed person—it resonated with me.

“I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up,” the narrator of the first section of The Book of Disquiet states, very early on within the story—too much text to comfortably get tattooed on my person, somewhere, so I settled for my second favorite line, or at least, at this time, near the end of 2017, one that was a little shorter but still spoke to me, and was similar to a very long quote by Anton Chekhov that I thought about constantly.

How much I’ve lived without having lived!

It’s tattooed on my left forearm, in a font modeled after the handwriting of Elliott Smith, and as someone who is, you know, still a depressed person and will more than likely be a depressed person for the rest of their life, this something I think about. Not that often. But enough. About the difference between being alive and living, and how we continue to do the former, or why we continue to do it, and what prevents us from participating, for whatever reason, in the latter. 

If you’re not living, then you’re dying. And how much I have lived without having lived.

*

I lose a bit of myself laying out eggshells.

And, I mean, it’s not something that I think about often, though, as I say that, I realize that it is something that I think about often enough, or, perhaps, more often than I should, or is helpful, or beneficial, in really any sense of the word. 

And, I mean, it is something that when I do find myself thinking about it, it is usually at this time of year—the spring, or the spring as it is designated by the calendar. The tail end of winter, in early March, and the arrival of spring, as the month progresses and then becomes April.

I think about where I was, and, I guess, more importantly, who I was, four years ago, in March of 2020—and I think about that, in contrast to where I am, and I suppose, more importantly, who I am now, four years later.

And what I give consideration to, in these moments, when I do allow my mind to wander is to trace, and then retrace, four years’ worth of steps, and missteps. And this is, of course, something that I do not give consideration to all that often, but in doing so, more often than I should, I understand that it is not helpful, or beneficial, in any sense of the word, but what I do wonder, is who I would have been if things, four years ago, had occurred differently, or if they had simply not occurred at all. 

And, I mean, there are of course the small things that have occurred, over the last four years—some of these might have happened, regardless, for whatever reason. I may have continued to lose weight, at times, despite my efforts not to. The gray may have, inevitably, overtaken the brown and red tones within the hair of my beard.

But I wonder if the last four years had not happened the way they did—I mean, just, like not happened at all, or had unfolded differently, if I would still have the same job that I had in the spring of 2020. If I would still be mostly happy with what I was doing and felt relatively supported by my co-workers. Or, if the dissatisfaction would have eventually arrived, just later than it did.

I wonder about myself—if, maybe, I would have been less caustic. A little easier to be around. A little more affable. Not as quick to lose my temper. 

I wonder if I would have ever felt compelled to start working with a new therapist after, like, 11 years with the same one. I wonder if something, along the way, would have occurred that required me to meet with the new therapist once a week.

I wonder if, after going out of my way not to drink alcohol for, like, five years, if I would have inevitably started leaning on it like a crutch, in the evenings, “just to take the edge off,” the way I began to more and more. 

As a depressed person, and sometimes severely, or debilitatingly so, I wonder what my mental health would look like—I would hope that I wouldn’t feel worse than I often do, right now, within this moment. I would like to think that I would maybe feel better, and there would be more days that were easier to navigate. 

Or, maybe there would be no difference. Maybe I was always going to feel like this.

I think about the bits of myself that I have lost. I think about, in my state, or the state that I, at least, often find myself in, the eggshells that inadvertently ask those around me to walk on. 

*

On the soaring, shimmering chorus to “Oxbow,” the slow-burning, slithering opening track from St. Cloud, the album Katie Crutchfield released under the moniker Waxahatchee, in March of 2020—the release date just a few weeks into the onset of the pandemic, she sings, and repeats the line, “I want it all.” The album itself was important for a number of reasons, but, there are two that immediately come to mind—it was an extremely personal album, lyrically, as Crutchfield wrote it to reflect on her sobriety, and sonically, it marked a large shift for her, as it marks her hard pivot into an at times folksy, at times electrified country and western tinged sound.

I want it all.

On the smoldering and simmering chorus, to “Three Sisters,” the gorgeous, perfectly paced opening track from Tigers Blood, the album Katie Crutchfield released under the moniker Waxahatchee, in March of 2024, she sings a line that, in the way it connects back over four years, simply cannot be coincidental—“You get everything that you wanted.”

I want it all.

You get everything that you wanted.

And, maybe, if you’re like me, you form associations with specific artists or certain albums—tethering them to moments in time, yes, certainly, but also thinking about them w/r/t times of the year. 

Anecdotally, autumnal and winter albums are, perhaps, the easiest for me to make those associations with—there is no shortage of albums, or songs, that I both was introduced to in various autumns from my life, or they, at least to me, sound like autumn. 

There are so many songs, or albums, that, at least to me, feel like winter.

Of the seasons, the one that I have the least musical associations connected to is spring. There are albums that are important to me that were released in the spring, yes, but are they “spring albums”? And there are certainly albums, or songs, that are important to me, that I was introduced to in various springtimes in my life, but I there are not all that many that come flooding to mind, immediately, within this moment, where I understand I have created some kind of extremely wistful connection.

And I do understand that most people have misgivings, of some kind, about the different seasons—the uncomfortably hot, or humid, temperatures and weather of the summer, or the uncomfortable and seemingly endless stretches of cold, and the piles of snow, in the winter. And I hadn’t, until last year, given consideration to the misgivings one might have about spring.

I had, in a conversation with my friend Alyssa, on the cusp of winter’s end and spring’s beginning, referred to it as “a promise.”

“It feels like a promise to you?,” she responded, a little surprised, while we sat at her dining room table.

“Do you not think it’s a promise?”

And it turns out that I misunderstood what she had meant when, at the top of this conversation, she said, “We’re getting into spring.” I had, erroneously, thought she meant that there was a hope, and the getting out of the end of the bleakness of winter was in sight.

For Alyssa, springtime is not as cozy—and there is warmth, sure, but as she explained, none of the fun “warm things” can be done yet during this time.

And I think there is, at least for me, a small, subtle sense of hope, or of potential, or a whispered promise of better things in the springtime. A slow retreat from the long, seemingly endless nights and the way our breath hangs suspended in the frigid air. There are the days in early spring when, in the warmth and radiance of the sunlight, we ultimately think it is warmer than it actually is—wearing a lighter jacket, or no jacket at all, then realizing we’ve made a poor decision. 

The windows thrown open within your home to let fresh air in, only for that fresh air to become, rather quickly, too cold, and for, perhaps, your spouse, or partner, to quickly lament about the temperature. 

 

There is a want. For something more. For something a little better or with more potential or that offers more hope. 

We want it all. Do we get everything we wanted?

And of the seasons, the one that have the least musical associations connected to is spring. And maybe it is because it was an important album—released early in the pandemic, yes, which was, of course, not the best time to attempt to release an album or a book, or a film, or anything really. An important album—one has aged well and still feels sharp and relevant, and one that I return to regularly, four years later. 

Or, maybe it is within the looseness, the near jubilance it reaches, and the search for a hope, or for a promise or a potential that you are so very close to grasping with your fingers. 

In its sound—a robustness, not flashy, that conjures both a new warmth and a warmth to come, and in representing a time, if you will, St. Cloud is ultimately a spring album, or, at least, one of the few that I do find myself forming that connection with. 

And maybe because it is springtime once again—both a promise and not, and we are four years into the pandemic, and the way our lives, and this world have changed because of it, with the release of Tigers Blood, Crutchfield’s latest as Waxahatchee, I wonder if it, too, with all of its promise and want, will become a springtime album. 

*

And it is at this point that I will be open and honest and say that I am, perhaps, not the best person to be writing about the evolution of Katie Crutchfield’s project Waxahatchee—simply because, up until I received a text message from an old friend from college who had suggested that I take a listen to St. Cloud, I had never given the band much consideration. 

And, I mean, I no longer really have much of a finger on the pulse of what is popular, or what is creating a buzz in the indie music circuit the way I once did, but following the release of Crutchfield’s second full-length, Cerulean Salt, one of two records she released for the Don Giovanni imprint before releasing three albums via Merge, Waxahatchee was a name I would see in headlines in places like Pitchfork or Stereogum. And if you were to ask me now, I would be unable to provide you a real answer, but there was something, there was something that, upon each album’s release, prevented me from not even being curious to listen. 

Even now, with copies of both Tigers Blood and St.Cloud, as well as Crutchfield’s one-off album with singer and songwriter Jess Williamson, under the name Plains, in my home, filed within my over-stuffed shelves of records, there is something that has prevented me from even being curious to walk backward through her canon and listen to Waxahatchee’s humble beginnings.

St. Cloud, within her catalog, arrived like a revelation—as it should. Crutchfield’s debut under the Waxahatchee moniker, American Weekend, released in 2012, is about as stark and lo-fi as you can get, and even in just a cursory listen to small snippets from subsequent albums show that even before she fully embraced the smoldering and sharp, country and western leaning sound, you can hear the growing confidence and ambition taking shape.

Spread across twelve thoughtful, and, at times, raucous songs, Tigers Blood sees Crutchfield reteaming with producer Brad Cook, and continuing the revelatory spirit of its predecessor—this time, with more assuredness and charisma, and even a swagger in some places, that makes the album, even when it falters ever so slightly in its first half, a true joy to sit down with, spending time unpacking the poignant writing and subtly being moved (literally) by the groove-ladened, twangy arrangements of nearly every song included.

*

While St. Cloud was intentionally bookended with tracks that were destined for their placement within the album’s running—the aforementioned, slinking “Oxbow,” and somber pleadings of the title track, respectively, Tigers Blood is less so in this intentionality, specifically with its title track, which, coincidentally, is what brings the album to a close.

After the slow-burning, patient rise and then release from “Three Sisters,” Tigers Blood’s first half quickly gains momentum, though Crutchfield is aware of how to pace things, balancing the exuberance and bombast of several of these songs with moments that are more inward and reflective.  

The album’s second track, “Evil Spawn, is the first moment of that electrified, country-tinged bombast, building itself up almost from the moment it begins, and becoming near anthemic as it continues to unfold. 

Opening with the low rumble coming from the drum kit, there is a propulsive nature to “Evil Spawn” as the other instruments join in—a chugging, almost bouncing steady bass line, as well as a crunchy, though subdued electric guitar that plays the song’s main melody, with the quiet, nearly muted strums of an acoustic guitar being the last thing to fold itself into the mix. 

In an interview just before the release of Tigers Blood, Crutchfield explains that, early on in the recording process of the album, there was roughly a day when she and producer Cook gave consideration to making a more pop-leaning album in sound before she realized that she was uncomfortable with how it sounded. And there is, of course, an overlap between the idea of “pop music” and “contemporary popular music,” and even in an album like Tigers Blood, and with a songwriter like Crutchfield, you can hear “pop” elements within her songwriting—“Evil Spawn” is an excellent example of that in how it is structured in terms of an infectious melody that surges throughout, and the arrival of the bursting chorus.

And when the music moves a little slower, it is a little easier to focus, or give your attention to Crutchfield’s lyricism on Tigers Blood—a song like “Evil Spawn” doesn’t exactly move at a breathless pace, but because it continually pushes itself forward, there is a little bit of keeping up that is asked of you if you do wish to dedicate time to lyrical analysis.

Her writing here, similar to her writing on St. Cloud, is personal without being entirely too revealing, if that makes sense. There are parts of herself in it, certainly, but she does play some things very close to the chest, finding this space that is honest, and true, but still shrouded in just a a little poetic, fragmented ambiguity. Regardless of just how personal or just how poetic, Crutchfield does know how to turn a phrase, which she does throughout the album, seemingly with ease, and a real grace.

“Evil Spawn” opens with what, at least to me, is a surprising kind of self-deprecation, or at least is a little self-satirical. “Take my money,” she begins in kind of a speak/singy shout. “I don’t work that hard. I fall asleep in the beating heart of a dying breed, peddling some lost art.” 

In the same interview where Crutchfield explains the brief foray into pop experimentation in the early sessions for Tigers Blood, she also reveals that as a whole, the personal nature of the album, as a whole, is centered around the kind of long, middle-stretch of a relationship, and growing comfortable with yourself, and where you are in life at the age she’s reached. Now in her mid-30s, and in a longtime relationship with musician Kevin Morby, a song like “Evil Spawn,” in all its bombast and excitement, does ultimately depict a kind of domestic scene. 

And in that domestic scene, there is a contrast, however slight, between the kind of comfort and quiet that Crutchfield had eased herself into and now desires, and the perhaps more carefree and youthful existence of her earlier days—not even of her relationship with Morby, but in the earliest days of both Waxahatchee, and P.S. Elliot, the band she founded with her sister Allison when they were in their late teens. 

“If we stand out in some wild city street, dodging every car, every thief, and disease,” Crutchfield continues in the second verse of “Evil Spawn.” “Catching tiny crumbs in the heartless breeze—say we’re tough as nails, say we’re both naive.”

The juxtaposition, then, comes in the form of the song’s final verse, which, without revealing entirely too much, does portray not a “domestic bliss,” but a kind of pleasantness and comfortability that one reaches within the dynamic they have with a romantic partner. 

“You let me fill every room,” she begins. “Wax poetic and presume. Your principles ripen into a fragile tomb—watch it split in two. What you do and say sustain harmony. What you thought was enough—well, it works for me.”

The other side, or at least a different facet of the kind of domestic ease of “Evil Spawn,” is found later on the album’s first side, in “Burns Out at Midnight.”

“Burns Out” is one of the places within the album, specifically within the first half, where Crutchfield and her assemblage of players on Tigers Blood pull things in—it’s slower in its pacing, and much more restrained, yet the instrumentation is admirable in its tightness and a kind of melancholic soulfulness that courses through it from the moment it opens with the big strums of the acoustic guitar and very deliberately timed piano chords that ring out as the tumbling of the drums and a mournful harmonica find their place early on. 

That restraint, I think, comes in part due to the song’s genuinely interesting use of percussion and rhythm, which does continue its methodical tumbling in the way it keeps time, but it does so without the use of the stare drum—so within that restraint, there is a sense of tension that seems to just simmer and churn as “Burns Out” continues.

“I got something to hold back,” Crutchfield begins, fittingly, in the song’s opening line. “If I put up a fight, it’ll follow me home. I think I might stay out dancing—if my blood runs cold with a heart of stone, and my fire burns out at midnight.”

The discourse, and tension, within the writing grows, or at least becomes a little more focused in its description, within the second verse, as well as the chorus. “I get home from working hard, honey—state the obvious, and watch it work its way in,” she continues. “We been checked out, chasing the money. And I been trying to tell ‘em it ain’t no way to live.”

Even within the tension, though, of these small, disharmonious ripples within a domestic setting, as there is within “Evil Spawn,” there is, like, this sense of hope or at least something small and good that is worth holding on to—a kind of longing. “We go another round, I got nothing to say. It don’t make no difference,” Crutchfeld concedes in the chorus. “Might be good on my own, but I ain’t running away—I wanna chase it to the end when I’m seeing a vision.”

And within that hope, or the acknowledgment of a small, good thing, Crutchfield does find herself in a place of appreciation and gratitude as the song reaches its final verse, which is among some of the more inherently tender lines on the album. “I got reason to believe this old house gave me revelation I wasn’t prepared to receive,” she confesses. “And you’ve been called upon for the duration.”

*

And among the things that did, and still does, strike me when I first sat down with St. Cloud, in particular its slithering opening track, was how dexterous of a vocalist Crutchfield is. Yes she can howl and shout, but there is also this very impressive precision that she uses, if she wants, when she wants. And in my piece about the album, from which I am now four years removed from and slightly remiss at the notion of going back and really re-reading, with care, things I have written even in the more recent past, something that I did mention, as a little bit of a joke, maybe, even, was that in hearing the very deliberate way Crutchfield spilled up the syllables and words and allowed them to fall and scatter where they needed to within the writhing, pulsating rhythm, I asked myself if she was rapping.

She wasn’t rapping. I mean, not really. And I guess I have to roll my eyes at myself from four years ago thinking that was, like, a clever or cute thing to include in the piece because I have, most certainly, lost a lot of whatever sense of humor I had in the years that have passed. But there is something genuinely interesting about the way she bends her delivery to fit within the rhythm of the song, which she does again early on in the second half of Tigers Blood, in the song “Crimes of The Heart.”

Musically, at least as it begins, “Crimes of The Heart” is among the most country and western tinged on Tigers Blood—it opens with a quickly strummed guitar that sets a shuffling pace, with the low, somber, warm tones of an electric piano, and a gentle, sorrowful, twangy lead guitar that interjects itself into the mix. It’s a gentle shuffle, one that serves Cructhfield’s vocal performance well, and manages to remain in a kind of contemplative reserve—there’s no percussion to speak of, save for the jingle of a tambourine, so it is really the acoustic guitar that creates the groove-oriented rhythm that pushes the song forward. 

Crutchfield, when she arrives, wastes no time in the precision and very calculated nature of her delivery—allowing the words to quickly exit her mouth and scatter in a way that is not disorienting exactly, but does require your attention so that you can keep up with her. Again. It’s not rapping. But there is this impressive control and fluidity to her vocals here, really punctuating specific parts to each word and really pacing the speed with which they come out, that makes the song one of the most captivating as a whole on the album.

Lyrically, as the words spiral around, it is a song that is steeped in a little more ambiguity; though there are still some surprising lines—“In every crime of the heart you’ll rip yourself apart,” she begins in the second verse. “It’s outsider art; provokes every emotion.”

Then, just a little later, in the snarky, observational chorus, “You play the villain like a violin—it comes from within. Darkness you can befriend—it comes from within.”

Tigers Blood’s second half opens with “Lone Star Lake,” which also operates from a place of restraint—subdued, twangy, and almost rollicking or, at the very least, bouncy, in the song’s bass line, and the little rolled flourishes on the snare drum.

And it, like the songs before it on the album’s first half, does depict a kind of domestic scene, or at least details the kind of daily minutia from a couple who have been together for a long time—it’s not boring, or anything, certainly, but rather, there’s a kind of comfort and understanding. “My heart sinks in the orange and pink, and I call you by your last name,” Crutchfield sings early on, before adding, “I’ll kiss you like a fever dream companion.”

In the second verse, she delivers what is certainly one of the more affecting lines of the album, and one that, perhaps, resonated the most with me. “I’ll stand arm-in-arm with anyone who’s able to let me be the object of their misery.”

*

In advance of Tiger Blood’s arrival in full in March, Crutchfield released three singles—the slow-burning duet with MJ Lenderman, “Right Back to It,” the raucous, electrified “Bored” (one of the few songs on the album that is fine, yes, sure, but not one that I found genuinely interesting), and the honestly kind of sultry “365.”

Placed near the end of the record, in the final third, “365,” is inherently the quietest on the album, just in terms of the balance between the instrumentation and vocals, and even within the instrumentation, it operates within a place of sparseness. Though, that doesn’t mean that it is desolate by any means, or stark—there’s just not much else outside of the strums of the acoustic guitar, the sound of a hand slapping the body of the guitar to keep time in the spaces created while the sound of the chord rings out then dissipates, and the light, additional shimmer of a subtle electric guitar, it does rely heavily if not entirely on Crutchfield’s dynamic vocal performance—soaring into a higher, fragile, almost brittle range during the pleading chorus, then back down into a smoldering, lower register for the song’s verses.

In her lyricism on “365,” Crutchfield takes the domestic scenes, or at least the depictions of partnership and romance, into a different place—one that walks a line between a tenderness, but also a kind of regret that is a little bratty, a little sneering, and maybe even a little bitter.

“I stop picking up all your phone calls,” Crutchfield states with the hint of a smirk in her voice, at the start of the second verse. “Take a shot at decency. If I heard your voice on the other line unceremoniously.”

That bitterness, or resentment, recedes though as she heads towards the chorus, and it does give way to not so much forgiveness, because I am uncertain if there is a need for that within the context of the song—but, rather, a kind of resigning one’s self to an understanding. 

“I catch your poison arrow,” she continues. “I catch your same disease. Bow like a weeping willow—buckling at the knees. Begging you, please.”

That continued reassignment and understanding, within how she is connected to, and ultimately does care about this off-stage antagonist, does make the final verse a more tender one, though it is implied that it is an exhausted kind of tenderness.

“If you fly up beyond the cosmos, it’s a long way to fall back down,” she observes in the moment when her voice begins to ascend to that higher, more fragile range, as a means of punctuating the importance and weight of this moment within the narrative. “You always go about this the wrong way, and I’m too weak to just let you drown. So when you kill—I kill. When you ache—I ache,” Crutchfield opines. “We both haunt this old, lifeless town. When you fail—I fail. When you fly—I fly, and it’s a long way to come back down.”

The resignation, the tenderness, and whatever resentment might linger all converge, then, in the closing lines of “365.” “365 days—tell me I’m your lucky charm,” she demands. “We defy gravity again, somehow make it out unharmed. And I have my thoughts about it, but I carry you in my arms, anyway.”

It, certainly, is not a “love song,” in the more traditional or stereotypical sense, but rather, a “song about love.” There is a space, of course, where those things intersect and overlap, but writing a song that is about love often means writing about the more unflattering or even mundane elements of a relationship, which is what Crutchfield does across a bulk of Tigers Blood, in terms of exploring her own long-term relationship and looking for the small, beautiful, or even uncomfortable moments that are able to be fostered into a poetic narrative.

The album’s first single, “Right Back to It,” is similar, though much more sentimental and earnest in how it is executed.

“Right Back to It,” in a word, is gorgeous. Utterly, and effortlessly so. It unfolds gently and methodically, not moving too quickly, but also it never feels like it’s too slow. It’s easy-going, and has just the right amount of twang, with instrumentation that is present and compliments the entire aesthetic of the song well, but is also just hushed enough, in that complimentary nature, that it never runs the risk of taking away the focus from Crutchfield’s vocals, and lyrics, within the verses, and the stunning harmony vocals she weaves with MJ Lenderman in the affectionate and infectious chorus.

Lenderman, both the occasional solo artist, as well as the guitarist for the group Wednesday, contributes additional vocals throughout the album, and plays guitar on every track, but “Right Back to It” is the only song where he is credited as a featured performer. His vocals, much like his guitar playing throughout, is subdued, but impressive, and his presence on the album is a welcome one, with the slight drawl in his voice (one that has been compared, at times, to Jason Molina) creating just a little more sonic depth within the songs where he does appear.

There is a very deliberate, delicate, swirling, tumbling feeling to “Right Back to It,” in its tempo and the way it swells just slightly during the chorus to fit the earnestness of the lyrics. And, like other places across Tigers Blood, “Right Back to It” is not a “love song” exactly, but it is certainly a song about love, or at least one that explores certain facets within the dynamic of a relationship—specially the “middle stretch” of one, as Crutchfield had explained.

And I think what is most compelling about it, outside of how objectively well made it is, as a pop song, is the way it depicts what I could only call an “anxious love.” Because even in the very gentle, and beautiful way it is orchestrated, lyrically, there is this minor sense of unease—not uncertainty, but just a little bit of discomfort, that quietly courses and bubbles throughout. Along with that though, as you do hear elsewhere on the album in these moments, there is often the sense of hope or at least of optimism too.

The unease, I think, comes from perhaps an understanding that you, or at least in this case, Crutchfield, is potentially the more caustic one in her relationship—less charming at times, despite her best efforts. Possibly more difficult to be around, or one that does require a little more patience.

Someone who is not easy to love, especially the longer you get to know them.

I am, of course, still talking about Crutchfield here. But it is also a moment on this album when it does ask me to take a long, stark look at the unflattering reflection I see of myself, mirrored in what she’s depicting.

Someone who is not easy to love, especially the longer you get to know them.

Near the end of the first verse, Crutchfield refers to herself as being “blunter than a bullseye,” before she sings the first of two incredibly accurate descriptions of an anxious mind—“I get ahead of myself,” she says, letting her voice carry the last word through to the next line. “Bracing for a bombshell.”

The second verse, then, explores the kind of seemingly endless patience that is required when it comes to loving someone who is, admittedly, hard to love, or difficult. “Your love written on a blank check,” she begins, turning one of the more tender, surprising phrases on the album. “Wear it around your neck—I was at a loss,” she continues, though the final lines of that verse come with a kind of trepidation, on her part, at least. “But you come to me on a fault line, deep inside a goldmine—hovering like a moth.”

“I lose a bit of myself,” she observes, in the second reflection on an anxious existence. “Laying out eggshells.”

Even as she becomes more self-deprecating towards her potentially reckless or self-destructive behaviors within the song’s final verse and the exclamation of refusing help when offered, it is within the gentle and heartfelt chorus where there is the most dazzling sense of both hope and an easy-going kind of comfort. “I’ve been yours for so long we come right back to it,” she sings in the chorus, her voice soaring above the harmonizing accompaniment from Lenderman. “I let my mind run wild—I don’t know why I do it. But you just settle in, like a song with no end. If I can keep up,” she offers as an assurance to both herself, and the person to whom this song is directed, “We’ll get right back to it.”

*

I’m living like I’ll never die.

And, as it could certainly not be coincidental that Crutchfield connects the “I want it all” that she howled as the chorus within the opening track on St. Cloud with the line, “You get everything you wanted,” from the opening track here on Tigers Blood, “Three Sisters”—it also could not be coincidental that Crutchfield takes another line from “Three Sisters”—“If you’re not living, then you’re dying,” and connects it to a line said offhandedly in the album’s penultimate track “The Wolves.”

“I’m living like I’ll never die.”

Sequenced so near the end of the album, there is something confident, or assured that occurs musically during “The Wolves,” but even in the more straightforward and ultimately kind of restrained, almost unassuming approach to the song’s arranging, there is something terribly melancholic about it—like, coursing through it—in tone, yes, but also in how Crutchfield reflects within her lyricsm.

Musically, “The Wolves” moves at a deliberate, measured pace—and there is this feeling of something hanging in the small moments that form in between the next thud of the bass drum or snap of the snare, and the short strums of the electric guitar. And when the chorus arrives, the restraint, or hush, that the song operates in is not really released, though there is a little give, with some additional percussive elements, and some extra guitar noodling that comes in underneath Crutchfield’s self-effacing lamentations.

“The Wolves” opens with a bleak portrait, and throughout the song, things really do not get much lighter in their depictions; and I think what, or at least in part, of what Crutchfield is wrestling with in the song, outside of her own anxieties, or anxiety disorders, is not exactly a restlessness, but an understanding of where you are, and where you were before you arrived there, and then the duality of the comfort of remaining where you are, and maybe a vague notion of what will come next, or where you’ll go, and the potential allure of the uncertainty, the exuberance, and freedom of turning toward something new, regardless of how destructive it might be.

“I ain’t said a word in weeks—these hold habits’ll weigh you down,” she snarls in the first verse. “I can’t talk to god; I can’t light it up’ I can’t take something that I’m unworthy of,” she continues, before becoming a little more resentful, and critical, within the second verse. “There’s a lock on the door that costs more than my car, babe,” she pointedly observes. “And I ain’t ever come close to crossing that threshold anyways.”

And it is within that verse where she does seem to muse on a difficult patch within a relationship—presumably hers, though, given the poetic ambiguities that do run throughout Tigers Blood, we, as listeners, cannot be certain. “I can’t hear our song on the radio without a clear recollection of the touch and go,” she confesses.

That touch and go, or at least that tension, in an interpersonal relationship, ripples up to the surface in a number of places as “The Wolves” unfolds—like in the lines that arrive before the chorus: “You don’t ease up on me. You know I stay in a hurry babe—I miss a lot of good things,” or, in the third verse as a whole: “There’s a reason I fold, I’m sure I will become clear,” Crutchfield concedes. “You’ve been proving yourself wrong with or without me here.”

She does, of course, throw herself to the titular, metaphorical wolves twice within the song, but it is the first chorus that I am most interested in, or is the most compelling, just in terms of the larger ideas that seem to be present within Tigers Blood. “If I throw my body on a plane, in a car, on the ground,” she exclaims. “I’m living like I’ll never die.”

And I think that, within the context, does speak to the central tension of the song, specifically—the comfort you know, or the ease that you know, or have known, but still feeling the pull for something more, or larger, that does ask you to push yourself a little harder—perhaps how you used to, one, before you found that comfort. 

Because there is, of course, a difference between the idea of “living” and the idea of “being alive.” There is a place where they intersect, or overlap, certainly, but we are talking about two different things. 

And it is, at over 6,500 words into this reflection on Tigers Blood, which is, of course, about a number of other things as well, that I will ask you if I may, for a moment, break the fourth wall, and address you directly, as I often do. And in doing so, I would ask for your patience, with having made it this far, as I feel compelled to introduce a new idea before I guide us all toward the end.

I would ask for your patience because, like I often do, this perhaps will be a bit of a stretch. 

Something that I do not talk much, because it no longer comes up with the frequency it once did when I was younger, is what I went to school for. I have a background in theatre—both something that I am grateful for the experiences from, but also wish I had maybe chosen a different field of study, I do know a lot about, and often give a lot of consideration, to plays and playwrights. 

I think about Anton Chekhov a lot—his short stories, certainly, but also his four most well-known plays, including The Three Sisters. And without getting too far into the weeds with describing it, or attempting to analyze some of the larger metaphors and themes in it, the thing to know about it, I guess, is that it is ultimately about three women who continue to want, or have desires, for something better, or larger, but they never act on them. They are then, symbolically and quite literally, by the end, trapped by both the choices that they’ve made, but also the things they have not done.

You get everything that you wanted.

If you’re not living, then you’re dying.

How much I’ve lived without having lived.

There is, of course, a difference between the idea of “living” and the idea of “being alive.” There is of course a place where they intersect, or overlap, certainly, but we are talking about two different things. 

And what I don’t know is if Crutchfield is even making the slightest reference to The Three Sisters in the smoldering, flawless opening track to Tigers Blood, or if it is just truly coincidental, and that in my endless reaching for something that is, perhaps, not really there, as a means of framing an album or a song, I have, once again, as I seem to regularly do, made a stretch that may, or may not land the way I wish it to.

Four years ago, on St. Cloud, “Oxbow,” intentionally selected as the opening track, truly did surprise and then set the tone for the rest of the record—a little genre-bending, or at least blurring an aesthetic, it was dizzying, beautiful, and well-written, and in grabbing your attention, did guide you into the rest of the record. Tigers Blood does not really need a kind of true thesis statement like that, which gives it the time and space it needs to simmer before Crutchfield brings it to the place where it lifts off just enough to be a powerful, emotional, moment of transcendent beauty. 

And the thing about the way that “Three Sisters” simmers, is that Crutchfield keeps it there just until the very last moment—not until she can no longer hold it back, but rather, a “now or never” kind of situation. I mean, if you listen to enough contemporary popular music, you will understand that a song like this is structured in a way that it is going to build and build, until it is released and ascends, but it is the question of when. And across the song’s four minutes and change, it does continue to work toward something, and the moment when that something arrives is truly a marvel.

Beginning with a low quiver of sustained guitar feedback just in the distance, “Three Sisters” methodically starts unfolding with the punctuative, quiet strums of the acoustic guitar, in time, with big, swooning piano chords, with Crutchfield’s voice wasting no time in coming in over the top of it all, and a subtle, shimmering electric guitar filing in as she slowly works her way into the bending, weaving melody that courses throughout big parts of the song—again, really not sparing any moment before reminding listeners, as if they had forgotten over the four years between this album and St. Cloud, about how dexterous the command of her voice, and how precise she can be—here, there is an impressive rise and fall and give and take within emphasis as she moves through the song’s first verse.

As “Three Sisters” continues to build, and in moments when you think that it might actually detonate, or lift off from the circling pattern Crutchfield effortlessly contains it within, there are other subtle elements that you can begin to pick up on, including the low, sorrowful hum of an organ, and the icy cutting of a violin. By the end of the second verse, and as the band heads into a short bridge, the low rolling of the snare drum does, in fact, signify that it is time, and as Crutchfield hits the first line of the song’s third verse, “Three Sisters” does lift off with less than two minutes left in the song, with the clattering of the drum set coming in to fill in the rhythm, giving way to a groove that I was unaware was present within the fabric of the song.

And it is, of course, within even just the first four lines to “Three Sisters,” that I understood, yes, the kind of album, both in tone and aesthetic, I was in for, but more than that, I understood that I was hearing one of the finest songs of the year, and certainly the finest moment on Tigers Blood—in terms of the containment and simmer and payoff, certainly, but Crutchfield’s phrase turns here are just absolutely incredible—in what she chooses to reveal, what she chooses not to reveal, and how she executes both so flawlessly from the moment her mouth opens.

“I pick you up inside a hopeless prayer,” she begins slowly, a twang and an ache in her voice. “I see you beholden to nothing. I make a living crying—it ain’t fair, and not budging,” she continues, not spending too much time on what is, for me, one of the most resonant lines from the album.

And it is within this sprawling, rising, and falling first verse where Crutchfield connects “Three Sisters,” certainly not coincidentally, to a line from the dizzying “Oxbow,” from St. Cloud. “I don’t see why you would lie,” she begins. “It was never the love you wanted. It’s a state of mind you designed,” she continues, as specific words and syllables quickly rise then fall. “You get everything that you wanted.”

And in both this first verse, as well as in the verse that follows, after bending her voice as a means of playing with the emphasis and crafting a melody out of the, she does pull things back temporarily to a much more reflective place for, at least in part, the delivery of, “It plays on my mind how the time passing covers you like a friend,” and what does ultimately end up being the line, whether she intended for it to have this much weight or not is unknown, that does make the song, and serves as a conceit to something much larger within the world of the album.

If you’re not living, then you’re dying.

And yes, of course, the remainder of “Three Sisters” is beautiful, as Crutchfield does allow things to simmer to the point where they boil over with a slow-motion beauty for the latter portion of the song. And yes, of course, there are poignant, evocative, and self-effacing lyrics that do arrive within this second half—specifically when she asks, “Am I your moat or your drawbridge,” but I will say that, upon my initial listen of Tigers Blood on the morning of its release, I was stuck on that one line, and had a difficult time re-composing myself to both focus on the remainder of “Three Sisters,” as well as the rest of the album.

If you’re not living, then you’re dying.

How much I’ve lived without having lived!

It’s tattooed on my left forearm, in a font modeled after the handwriting of Elliott Smith, and as someone who is, you know, still a depressed person and will more than likely, to some extent, 

better or worse, a depressed person for the rest of their life, this is something I think about. Not that often. But enough. And I think about it, and the quote from “On The Road” by Anton Chekhov that has stuck with me for decades—“I have lived, but in my fever, I have not even been conscious of the process of life itself. Would you believe it, I don't remember a single spring, I never noticed how my wife loved me, how my children were born. What more can I tell you? I have been a misfortune to all who have loved me.”

Because, of course, there is a difference between being alive and living and how we continue to do the former or why we continue to do it, and what prevents us from participating, for whatever reason, in the latter.

There is this fear, of course. Maybe fear is too extreme. There is the uncertainty. There are anxieties. Whatever barriers there are, or that we make for ourselves, it becomes easy to live within those because it is what we know. It’s not easy. But there is an ease in the knowing. It becomes more challenging, or difficult, or uneasy, when you push back against it and wish, or try, to overcome whatever fears or, anxieties, or uncertainties there are, regardless of their size or their weight. 

And, I mean, that is what Tigers Blood is ultimately about—the space where you have to reconcile or understand the differences and potential overlap between being alive and living, what you give up with one or the other, and whether there are places or chances where you can exist within both.

I have a penchant for overusing expressions in music writing—it’s something that I am aware of, and if you have made it 8,300 words into a piece about an album that you may or may not actually care that much about, and have given witness to me breaking the fourth wall on more than one occasion, you perhaps find my reliance on certain words, or descriptors, or specific expressions charming. But it is at this point, as we walk towards the conclusion of a piece that is about an album, I will often describe it as being a bold, or beautiful artistic statement, and I will regularly declare things an allegory for or a reflection of the human condition. 

And here’s the thing, though, is that Tigers Blood is a bold, beautiful, and enormous artistic statement that does not attempt to replicate the sound Katie Crutchfield wholeheartedly embraced four years ago but rather uses it as a means of continuation to create a record that is extremely earnest, thoughtful, and welcoming. 

And here’s the thing, though, is that Tigers Blood is, in all of its honesty woven into a poetic kind of ambiguity, is a reflection of a very specific portion of the human condition. We find peace, or calm, but there is still restless feeling we are unable to silence completely. 

We live. But are we living. And Crutchfield is not interested in, nor should we be asking her to, provide an answer for us because she is, at least within the world of the album, unable to answer this question for herself.

If you’re not living, then you’re dying. 

I want it all.

You get everything that you want. 

Tigers Blood is out now via Anti.