Saint Cloud

When an artist completely and beautifully upends the conventions of an entire genre, they’re probably aware of their capabilities. Saint Cloud is the sound of Katie Crutchfield at her most conscious, comfortable and controlled.

Katie is making a point of saying more with less, taking potent emotions and quietly tucking them into a plain white envelope for us to open and interpret. She’s as lucid as we’ve ever heard her, stripping down to her emotional core and daring us to make eye contact.

Confident and accomplished fifth album.

With barely a weak track to be heard, it all adds up to an album that sees Waxahatchee move up to another level. It’s the sound of a woman at peace with herself, and Crutchfield’s newfound serenity makes for a wonderful listen.

There’s a sharpness in these songs that still unsettles. It’s there in Crutchfield’s vocals, louder and fiercer than before, and on songs such as Fire, which is also difficult to love. Her lyrics, tackling subjects including addiction and self-hatred, often feel too verbose, but they become surprising and refreshing on closer listen.

‘Saint Cloud’ is the refreshed, reformed and matured Waxahatchee – and it’s glorious.

Saint Cloud is something far bigger. It isn’t just talking to Lucinda Williams’ 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, it pulls up right beside it, a vivid modern classic of folk and Americana.

What songs these are, genuinely good enough to be compared with peak Dylan: like him, Crutchfield is adept at nestling into the almost comforting niche of heartache and hopping out again with a grin.

Saint Cloud offers us the best possible version of Crutchfield she could possibly give us. The record is made by someone who was always whispering, finally having the confidence and courage to speak up and sing unrestrained. It demands to be listened to.

Waxahatchee's vision is clearer on Saint Cloud. [May 2020, p.34]

This is the most country she has ever sounded. The most lavish, too, despite the album having been stripped back to only its most necessary parts.

‘Saint Cloud’ is the rousing of a regenerated spirit that chronicles not just the journey but the revelations of love, life and death that comes with it. A very special album indeed.

While alternating between regretful slower tracks, midtempo drawls, and livelier, foot-tapping fare, the album never moves off dirt roads and adjacent orchards, and proves to be her most carefree-sounding effort to date. That's despite doggedly self-examining lyrics that keep Saint Cloud squarely in the realm of prior releases from an artist who continues to ward off complacency.

Saint Cloud, like Car Wheels, finds an artist operating at the top of her game, embracing, as Crutchfield put it, "the contradictions and the unknown" to produce a thrilling and inspirational work.

It holds the best batch of Waxahatchee songs yet, with Crutchfield at her most candid, raw and clear-eyed. This is the work of someone who’s begun to write a bold new chapter in her life, and it’s special stuff.

Saint Cloud is an instinctual high-water mark for Crutchfield and clear early contender for end of the year lists.

This more elusive, rootsy style suits Crutchfield well. It allows space to capture a clearer eyed vision of a life she’s still trying to balance, sort out and work through …just like the rest of us.

There’s a new richness to Crutchfield’s voice that smooths out the emotional extremities.

Saint Cloud is a refreshing listen from an exceptional singer-songwriter that shatters the myth of hard-living artists and proves that great artists can make great art without a drink.

A thick braid of an album, each song a bundle of strands interweaving with next. [May 2020, p.94]

This utterly beautiful balm of a record feels less like a confessional, and more a vessel for warmth, serenity and worldly wisdom. [May 2020, p.114]

That’s not to say that Saint Cloud is all moments of quiet self-reflection. Crutchfield’s artful command of heartfelt truths is still present and correct.