Four months removed from its initial release, but it really feels like Tigers Blood was meant to hit just right as these slow, sticky summer months sink in. After sprawling through storms and cloudforms, the latest from Katie Crutchfield and her band Waxahatchee is a quintessential glass of ice cold, sobering sweet tea to quench the warm weather season of all things imagined of rustic Americana existentialism. She’s been headed down this path for quite some years now, but with her sixth studio effort, the alternative country scenery is all hers to run through in its most vivid detail whenever Crutchfield’s word and sound spark rumination.

Helping hands bring all temperature color to life, as she invited in-demand Wednesday guitarist, MJ Lenderman, who makes for the picturesque dance partner with her on the centripetal lovers’ waltz “Right Back to It”, alongside Spencer Tweedy, and Twin Peaks’ Colin Frankel and Colin Croom into the studio to fill in some of those quieter spots left intentionally within the interiors of 2020’s St. Cloud. The collective energy tumbles clear-headed concessions of Crutchfield’s self and her personal and creative satellites off her tongue. She’s twisted, breathless, roiled, and satiated at once, and into the foreground with tinning bass drum and waning pedal steel, her song swoons with epiphanies sky high (“Ice Cold”, “Bored”) and sit in deepthinks as soft as southern humid air (“Lone Star Lake”, “Tigers Blood”.)

As one of the 21st century’s most transcendent indie rock-tinged folk songwriters, Tigers Blood peaks her craft of hard-earned introspective conversations that have left a long trail of footprints, except this time around, we’re invited to engage with her word in a lively charm. Whether that’s on the front porch, through backroad drives, resting your head onto your partners’ chest as insects orchestrate the night, or wrestling in your own stillness, this one has a way of hitting every sweet spot of thought.

Highlights: “Right Back to It”, “Bored”, “Lone Star Lake”

Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood is available now on ANTI- Records.

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