“Ivy Tripp” is more instrumentally varied than anything Katie Crutchfield has done with Waxahatchee before.
“Ivy Tripp,” the title of Katie Crutchfield’s third album as , is a term she invented for “directionlessness, specifically of the twenty-something, thirty-something, forty-something of today, lacking regard for the complaisant life path of our parents or grandparents.”
The record certainly captures that, and itap unsurprising if you’ve heard Waxahatchee before. She’s always been an introspective songwriter capable of delivering frustration and heartbreak with intimacy, and on “Ivy Tripp,” she’s still getting better at it. Itap obvious from the start — a beautiful indie rock hymn called “Breathless.” This album is full of pain, doubt, confusion, and acceptance of all that. “<” is mostly Crutchfield singing “You’re less than me / I am nothing” over and over while drums clatter arrthymically. And, in her signature fashion, lines like “The pain that you make never dies / I hung it up in a wistful disguise” don’t so much hit you as slowly creep up on you. Her careful vocal inflections have that power.
Even though this is an album about directionlessness, “Ivy Tripp” isn’t sonically lost at all. Crutchfield’s debut, “American Weekend,” was an acoustic bedroom record she made while snowed in at her childhood home in Alabama. Her breakout, “Cerulean Salt,” fit nicely in the pop-punk Philly scene she inhabited. There’s a bit of both on “Ivy Tripp.” Songs like “Under A Rock” and “The Dirt” could have come off her last album (or work spectacularly on the “10 Things I Hate About You” soundtrack), and even though the production is far clearer, there are a few tracks that call back to “American Weekend”’s quiet acoustic confessionals.
But itap not all just old sounds polished up. “Ivy Tripp” draws on her past work and comes up with something new. The first sounds of the record are a heavy buzz laid over clear organ tones, and itap so incredibly satisfying, not to mention new. There “La Loose,” a breezy, strings-backed indie pop tune with a chorus of lilting ooh’s, or “Stale By Noon,” which is something between a lullaby and a chamber choir piece. “Ivy Tripp” is more instrumentally varied than anything Crutchfield has done with Waxahatchee before. The big variations might sound directionless if the album existed in a vacuum, but given Crutchfield’s past work, it feels like itap going down the natural path. It sounds like she knows exactly where she’s going.
