The world was a dreadful place, for obvious reasons, back in 2020. Luckily, that same year, it was blessed with the release of Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee (musical alias of songwriter Katie Crutchfield) and it swiftly became my emotional support record (like many other people, I'm sure). I first got into Katie's music way back around the release of Cerulean Salt, but there was a beautiful clarity and spirit to Saint Cloud that brought me comfort at such a wild time. It's made any new music from Katie appointment listening.
Naturally, it felt like 2024 was getting off to a flyer when a story from Stereogum came into my feed revealing a new Waxahatchee record, Tigers Blood, was incoming this year and, along with it, the reveal of lead single "Right Back To It". Reading Katie explain her intentions for the song really caught my attention. "I wanted to make a song about the ebb and flow of a longtime love story... always finding your way back to a newness or an intimacy with the same person." When I found a moment to listen to it, I was floored.
Hearing that chorus for the first time was an extraordinary feeling. "Been yours for so long, Come right back to it..." Immediately I was getting emotional as, in that moment, I felt understood. Here was the perfect encapsulation of what a blessing it is to have a love that outlasts all of your anxieties and always takes you to a place of true belonging. It's a masterpiece and goes above and beyond Katie's aims for the song.
So often, love songs are from the standpoint of a new love, dominated by hope and excitement for the possibilities, meaning the love being described is more of a prospective love - an ideal you have faith that you'll reach when buoyed by fresh emotion. What makes "Right Back To It" so special is the fundamental lived-in quality it possesses. This is not a song about the ideal as an abstract concept. This is a song where you are living in the ideal - the genuine article, not the abstract - and recognising it in the day to day experiences of your love. There's a weight to the lyrics and performance that can only come from someone who has authentically lived this. It's a truly resonant song that makes me think of my life with my wife and how our love makes us better ourselves.
I see this song as a culmination of a lot of thematic and stylistic qualities that have been running through Katie's music ever since Saint Cloud. It was a fundamental shift in her music, closer towards Americana and coloured by Katie finding sobriety. On a personal level, it's where I started to feel a true connection, particularly lyrically. The main thing I admired about the Cerulean Salt/Ivy Tripp/Out in the Storm run of albums was the musicianship, especially the guitars, whereas Saint Cloud felt like an album where the narrative of each song had truly equal footing with the music being played. I'd get butterflies listening to so many of these songs, but there's two in particular I want to highlight.
Firstly, there's the utter joy that is "Can't Do Much". I can't hear those guitars without feeling a warmth in my stomach and my lips raising up to a wry smile. It's at the opposite end of the spectrum from "Right Back To It" in the sense of it exploring an earlier stage of your love for someone, but the musicality and the lyrics tie so well together that it feels considered and genuine. The second verse especially, speculating "When you're missing me, what do you see?", illustrates how someone's love can lift your own perception of yourself. It kind of ties in with the exploration of unconditional love, particularly self love, that runs through the album - Katie discussed this when she appeared on Song Exploder.
Equally, the second verse of "The Eye" gets my heart fluttering:
You’ll give me something beautiful to think and sing and follow
Our feet don't ever touch the ground"
On their own, those words are a touching description of that feeling of your horizons broadening thanks to your partner, but Katie's delivery of that first line & the way the instrumentation starts to work into the song really drive it home. Producer Brad Cook clearly has a great understanding of Katie's tone and both deserve lots of credit for maintaining an earthiness in this music. This carries over to the banjo and guitar play of "Right Back To It" especially.
Then there's the other key project that lead to something special being unlocked within "Right Back To It" - in 2022, Katie collaborated with Texas songwriter Jess Williamson. Working under the pseudonym Plains, they released a beautiful album, I Walked With You A Ways. The Crutchfield-penned song "Hurricane" sees Katie continue to ruminate on the ideas of unconditional love running through Saint Cloud. It's an important pre-cursor to "Right Back To It", outlining a duality of feeling similar to a destructive force in your own head but taking solace in someone still understanding you through it all. "And if you keep calm in my hurricane, I might keep it at bay, But I know you'll love me anyway".
I think what made this an exciting project for Katie was getting the chance to once again explore how her voice works in conjunction with others. There's such a richness to the choruses on these songs that come from how well Jess and Katie's vocals compliment each other. I've no doubt this was on her mind when bringing in MJ Lenderman to sing on "Right Back To It".
It was so funny hearing Katie describe her process working with MJ during her recent interview with Zane Lowe - how she went into "soccer mom" mode laying out her ideas and then MJ went in there and did his own thing entirely. Incidentally, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that it took this interview with Zane to make me realise the yacht rock/Boat Songs connection on MJ's most recent album (which is great).
In any event, they sound phenomenal together. It's that much more emotive hearing that chorus performed as a duet. I can't really tell if this is an actual easter egg or just my own head-canon, but I swear both singers put a different emphasis on the "keep" on the line "If I can keep up". In my head it sounds like a different person is ahead of the other on certain deliveries of the chorus. To me, this puts across that there's still a challenge in there - that even with familiarity things aren't always easy and at any point one or the other could fall behind but see their partner as the one leading the way to their betterment.
MJ's biggest contribution ended up taking, for me, the most poignant moment of the song that much higher: the melody on the line "But you just settle in, Like a song with no end". It was no surprise to hear Katie describe it getting such a rapturous reception in the studio because it's such a work of genius, driving home a magnificent line. Right there, in words I could never have put together myself, is the perfect description of the comfort that comes from the love of a partner who can almost read your mind and bring you back to that sense of safety. It is right up there with Talking Heads' "This Must Be The Place" as a musical touchstone I will forever cherish, a reminder of how lucky I am to have the love that I have with my wife.
I'll be seeing Waxahatchee tonight at New Century Hall in Manchester, this time with a full band in tow following Katie's solo show at the same venue last year. I'm beyond excited to hear these songs from the past four years of her career performed like this. I'll try not to be a blubbering mess when "Right Back To It" kicks in.
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