Waxahatchee's Tigers Blood

Writing Songs & Being Young

The last time my mom visited me at college before I graduated, her tone turned serious. She told me I had to listen to Waxahatchee, that she had been obsessed in a way she reserves for around three artists (my mom’s taste in music is good but in no way varied).

Curious, I pulled up Tigers Blood the next day—It was remarkable songwriting as well as being one of those albums that is emotionally complex without sounding like a bummer. It remained on repeat for the duration of college and now, as I plan out my adventures as an ‘adult’.

Tigers Blood is, in some ways, an ars poetica from Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee. It’s her sixth album and the follow-up to Saint Cloud, which expanded her audience significantly. With Tigers Blood, she defines what it means to her to write songs.

Additionally, though Crutchfield is the oldest she’s ever been (obviously), the album returns again and again to youth, to being young in the United States.

In the opening track (“3 Sisters”) Crutchfield sings: “I make a livin’ crying it ain’t fair/ and not budging”. In my experience, the absurdity of being a certain type of confessional songwriter is here you are complaining and analyzing your emotions, but the songs don’t get you anywhere beyond self-understanding, really. And that self-understanding alone can often feel ridiculous.

“Crimes of the Heart” is a later track that is about that stubbornness as it relates to writing songs (maybe even really good ones). As Crutchfield’s recent songs tend to be, the lyrics are sharp and fast-moving, the melody is catchy and almost light, the instruments and production is tasteful and sweet. The confidence of the first verse’s “I make it look easier every time” is quickly met with the doubt of: “If you left it to me, who knows where we would be? / Reading fortunes for free in someone else’s goldmine”. Without artistic support, she wonders if she would have sold out in some shape or form, though the sentiment is guarded with whimsicality. The “crimes of the heart” are made up of regrets and fears from the past. These crimes may “bewilder a few” but, almost laughingly, “it’s outsider art”. The advice that sticks with me most is at the end of the song. Crutchfield sings, again and again, “Hail the darkness you can befriend”—A good way to go about both art and life.

The penultimate song is “The Wolves”, Waxahatchee at her most Lucinda Williams. Casually, she sings: “I can’t talk to God, I can’t light it up, I can’t take something I’m unworthy of”. She worries that she might fail her songs in some vital way, that she will fall short. Crutchfield’s most famed chop as a songwriter is perhaps her enjambent and, the way she stretches her phrases around in the verses shows it off.

Her portrayal of youth comes up in the chorus, lines that I thought about a lot at the end of college: “You don’t ease up on me / You know I stay in a hurry, babe / I miss a lot of good things”. Staying in a hurry is something I understand—When I arrive at a place, I want to dig my feet in as far as I can, to feel as instantly as possible that I belong. However, when it’s time to move on, I want to completely reinvest. The light drums agree with her as she lists places she can throw her body, it’s hard not to believe her as she sings she is living like she’ll never die.

Waxahatchee makes a key argument about her role as a songwriter and performer in her chorus. The first one goes: “And if I throw myself to the wolves I did it all for the glory not the fruit rotting in my shade / Who’s begging to get inside?” and the second one follows with the same wolf scenario, compared instead to “not for the wind shaking off my leaves / not begging for a key”. She is declaring that she is not living for things that will fade (the fruit) or for the pleasantries and luxuries (the wind) but rather the glory—Which is very reminiscent of the Lucinda Williams line from “Fruits of My Labour”: “Take the glory any day over the fame”.

Tigers blood is not in fact a reference to the blood of a tiger, but rather the snow-cone flavor. The title track is a testament to Crutchfield’s ability to put you right there with her: “You’re laughing and smiling, drove my Jeep through the mud / And your teeth and your tongue bright red from tigers blood.” One of my last days of senior week, there was a free snow cone stand. I saw tigers blood flavor and pounced (no pun intended). Life feels a little more full when your lips are unsexily red and sugary from a snow cone. The verse goes on to: “We were young for so long, seersuckers of time / Drank someone else’s juice and left only the rind”. As pro-hedonism I am, there is something destructive in joy. It’s hard to live without destroying other things.

All music is inherently a soundtrack to time passing, I suppose, but “Evil Spawn” feels like it’s meant for it. The production style somehow reminds me of “Wide Open Spaces” by the Chicks. “Evil Spawn” is a sister to that song also in it’s insistence on young adulthood being big and freeing and messy. Crutchfield begins cooly and somehow without bragging: “Take my money, I don’t work that hard”. The melody lifts nicely in the pre-chorus with “on and on” and then completes itself in the chorus: “But there ain’t nothing to it, babe / We can roll around in the disarray / Of the final act of the good-old-days”.

Endings are inevitable, uneven, and often. You keep growing up, regardless of anything. But, Waxahatchee insists, you can get a good song out of every bit of it.