'Ivy Tripp' A Dense and Stunning Third Offering

From its opening note, Katie Crutchfield’s new album released under her project Waxahatchee distinguishes itself from her previous two. While “American Weekend” and “Cerulean Salt,” released in 2012 and 2013, respectively, on Don Giovanni Records, opened with the sounds of Crutchfield’s melancholic guitar, “Ivy Tripp,” Crutchfield’s major label debut on Merge Records, is an experimental and expansive new release—it instead begins with a synth line that sounds more like a corroded organ. Crutchfield and her backing band, made up of Kyle Gilbride and Keith Spencer, have created 13 denser, richer songs that, nonetheless, manage to feel like a continuation and progression of Waxahatchee’s project rather than a departure.

By COURTESY MERGE

Crutchfield has been making and performing music in bands since the mid-2000s, when she and her twin sister Allison performed in spirited pop-punk bands such as the Ackleys, P.S. Eliot, and Bad Banana. Since 2010, Katie has been performing with her project Waxahatchee. Her debut album, “American Weekend,” written and self-recorded in a week in her parents’ home, is an intense, raw listen. Crutchfield sings achingly and blisteringly of loss, grief, longing, and self-loathing over a soft guitar. “Cerulean Salt” is equally painful and powerful, featuring better recording quality and a sort of sharpening and amplifying of Crutchfield’s sound, with the addition of a backing band. Compared to “Cerulean Salt,” “Ivy Tripp” is an even bigger gamble, but Crutchfield’s sonic experimentation pays off powerfully.

This isn’t to say that Crutchfield’s sound on her latest album is entirely different from that on her previous releases. The album’s second track, “Under a Rock,” is reminiscent of her earlier work, blending elements of punk, folk, and even country. Crutchfield sings with searing force about a former lover: “The brick house that you built around your cranium / You wear it like a crown.” She is vehemently done with him—“You’re someone else’s mess tonight”—or so it initially seems.The song is scathing, but nuanced, resisting easy answers or conclusions about the ended relationship. Throughout the song, Crutchfield repeats the word maybe—in fact, it’s the final word on the track. She sings with an aching, wistful, and resigned quality, adding both ambivalence and complexity to the song.

In her song simply titled “<,” Crutchfield sings about another failed relationship—“I reveal more and more / Sculpting the bust / Of a man I'll forever ignore.” The final line of the song, “You’re less than me and I am nothing,” she repeats over and over again, like an incantation. This self-effacement is familiar territory for Waxahatchee—on the closing track of “Cerulean Salt,” “You’re Damaged,” she sang with a lacerating intensity: “This place is vile, and I’m vile too.” However, the sonic landscape of “<” is not so familiar. As Crutchfield repeats the final line, a clatter of guitar, drums, and pure noise builds under her singing. This sound continues for several bars after her voice stops. It is as if the song is powerfully bent, twisted to reveal some new way of expressing and moving through the emotions she sings about.

The track that is the farthest from her previous work, “La Loose,” is also one of the loveliest on the album. It is poppy and New Wave-y—complete with shimmering synths, a kicky drumbeat, and an ooh-ing hook. The lyrics, nonetheless, are pure Waxahatchee: “I know that I feel more than you do / Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh / I selfishly want you here to stick to.” It is an eviscerating, eminently danceable listen—a powerfully skewed take on a painful, dysfunctional relationship.

Waxahatchee’s “Ivy Tripp” is ultimately a powerful piece of art. It addresses pain, but, in its experimental fashion, it also explores how to represent pain in new ways. On the final track, “Bonfire,” Crutchfield sings of a friend in pain: “You got your heart broken / Now you unfold it when you're falling down.” The final words of the song, and the final words she offers as consolation are, “I say go ahead.” It is an emotionally evocative reckoning with pain, a powerful conclusion to to a stunning album.