zero vu

Stop your blog buzz – even if deserved – about Adrianne Lenker. The Waxahatchee Tigers Blood album is hitting on every level as a Top 10 album of 2024. Both Lenker and Katie Crutchfield play Salt Lake City in the next 75 days, so we can compare their live shows side-by-side. But I’ve compared their studio releases and Tigers Blood is top shelf. This is what I love about it.

Waxahatchee Tigers Blood album echoes Kevin Morby, Kathleen Edwards

Tigers Blood ranges between southern rock and more traditional alt country, with a consistent driven sound and attitude that Crutchfield said was intentional. The Waxahatchee Tigers Blood album is a change up from what she felt was Saint Cloud’s more feminine approach.

I kept saying I wanted the look of this record to be a high-femme version of a dude in a bar band. I’m still figuring out what that means to me, but that’s where the record cover look comes from.

(Should I apologize for quote graphing a Vogue profile?) (Or is it graph quoting?)

Kevin Morby doesn’t sound like a dude in a bar band but his girlfriend has sure been listening to his records.

Crutchfield and the indie icon have been dating basically forever. You can’t NOT hear Morby’s influence listening to Crutchfield’s vocals turn to a stage whisper on “Bored.” She dropped to a whisper at times on Saint Cloud, too.The lyrics and vocals nearly sound like a single from This is a Photograph.

More remarkable than Crutchfield’s resonance with her boo are the vocal runs and sad sack lyrics that reach back 30 years to Kathleen Edwards and her albums Failer and Back to Me. Edwards, in turn, clearly grew up on Freedy Johnston records. You can hear them both on the Waxahatchee Tigers Blood relationship dirge “Crowbar.”

Notably, Crutchfield has played a number of times with Lucinda Williams and Sheryl Crow (I think you can hear Crow’s Americana here, too) but not with the semi-retired Edwards.

Crutchfield croons on “Right Back To It”

You could drop almost any song from Tigers Blood here to show off the body of work Waxahatchee has poured into this record. The run of songs from “Right Back To It” to “Crowbar” are superb, every song is a single. Then you get Crutchfield’s vibrato and the gang vocals to close on the title track “Tigers Blood” (a kind of snow cone Crutchfield grew up on. Strawberry and coconut mixed together, for the record.)

I’m not a music video fan but it is fun to see Crutchfield and MJ Lenderman boating on swampy Lake Caddo on the Texas-Louisiana border on “Right Back To It.” I’m not sure Lenderman was having fun or maybe he’s just a poor actor. Dude couldn’t be bothered to actually pretend he was driving the boat.

This is Crutchfield’s favorite song on the record, a love song for Morby, and the original single.

Buy Tigers Blood from her website.

Hear Waxahatchee and Adrianne Lenker in Salt Lake City before July!

I just bought my tickets to hear the Waxahatchee Tigers Blood release in full at The Depot in Salt Lake City. The night is going to be rocking and the stage will be full.

If you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of Lenderman, Katie’s guitarist, backing vocalist and duet partner, you’ll probably be disappointed. But the star of alt country darlings Wednesday, who played last year’s Kilby Block Party will make a few cameos on the tour.

No sooner will the Waxahatchee Tigers Blood tour leave Salt Lake than the previously mentioned Adrianne Lenker will appear in June, also at The Depot. Verified resale tickets for Lenker, who is sold out, are going for $100, about three times Crutchfield’s program. And appropriately so, Lenker’s Bright Future (released on the SAME DAY as Tigers Blood) is an instant classic.

Fangirl post about Lenker coming soon enough.