(Wichita)
There are many musicians that talk of
laying their soul bare. Katie Crutchfield is a
songwriter who doesn't need to say it. Named after a creek near her
childhood home in Alabama, the recorded output of her Waxahatchee
project has been entwined in memories, hardships and relationships.
Talking about her
latest album, Crutchfield revealed "The
title Ivy Tripp is really just a term I made up for
directionless-ness, specifically of the 20-something, 30-something,
40-something of today”. She may
count herself as part of that directionless generation, but she comes
across as anything but. Releasing three albums since 2012, the
intimate bedroom recordings of American
Weekend, her breakthrough Cerulean
Salt and now Ivy
Tripp her latest collection of
songs.
She still bears the sounds of her
former band P.S. Eliot, filling Ivy Tripp with irresistible
and scrappy pop punk alongside the intimate singer/songwriter fare.
Tracks like Under A Rock and the grungy Poison come across like a mix
of Riot Grrl and The Pixies, brimming with attitude and hooks. In the
album's second half tracks like piano balladry of Half Moon and
Summer of Love see Crutchfield pared-down to just one instrument with
her voice.
The playful, lovestruck bedroom pop of
La Loose really stands out. Backed by a swinging drum machine beat
and keys it's sweet enough to give you a toothache, in a good way.
Air feels like a more powerful sentiment at the albums centre. A
mid-tempo almost-rock-ballad, but it's done on Katie's terms.
Distorted keys bolster the track's bold, soaring chorus, along with
some Kim Deal style 'oohs' backing her up. Ivy Tripp's
additional instruments and touches of layered vocals show a move into
slightly more sophisticated productions, but it's never too
distracting.
The ramshackle Pavement style riffs on
the track simply titled < don't gel so well, the drum beat that
rolls about like an improvised drum solo doesn't help it, though
there is a charm to how it barely holds together. Bonfire closes the
album it's most interesting experiment. A bare bones track marches on
a steady drum beat and two chords but carries a tension in the thick,
low murmurs of distortion that fill the track with before almost
breaking into feedback before the track's abrupt end.
Waxahatchee sings
'You see me how I wish I was/I'm not
trying to be seen' over an
electric hum of keyboards on Ivy Tripp's opening track
Breathless. Ivy Tripp's the songs are short and personal, the
musical equivalent of diary entries as if they were made in the same
moments that inspired them, and you feel they would have been written
whether anyone would be listening or not.
It's easy to see something of yourself
in these deeply intimate tracks but even on a surface level it's
easy to like the sugary sounding scrapbook of DIY punk and emotive
folk. Throughout Ivy Tripp there is an honesty that cuts
through all the noise and a strength in the delivery that reveals
Katie Crutchfield to be a quietly powerful
songwriter.
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