People tend to find that they usually continue listening to the music that they enjoyed during their pre-teen years through mid-20s the most. Last year, I felt like I leaned more into comfort artists than I typically did. This year, I’m challenging myself to be a better music listener, keeping up with new releases, checking out newer bands from The Scene, and trying to be more musically adventurous.
In the spirit of adventure, here’s a taste of the newer albums that I’ve been listening to this week.
Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood
Full disclosure: Waxahatchee probably falls in the realm of comfort artists for me, even if it doesn’t immediately come to mind for me. Cerulean Salt got a shoutout during a “Record Selection” video featuring Modern Baseball bassist Ian Farmer. He talked about how Katie Crutchfield had recorded her debut album American Weekend alone on a four-track, and I was immediately enthralled by the record for my late college career and early 20s. “Be Good” was a favorite drinking song.
Admittedly, I’m more drawn to the current iteration of Waxahatchee rather than their DIY run of records (save for American Weekend). Crutchfield really came into her own with 2017’s Out in the Storm, a breakup album which has one of my favorite lyrics of all-time (“You walk around like it’s your god-given right, and you love being right. You’ve never been wrong”). While I love Out in the Storm, 2020’s Saint Cloud propelled her to a new level of fame. It was no longer the scrappy emo kids who had played shows alongside the stripped down band, it was now the hipsters and indie kids who saw that Crutchfield could play to a wider audience.
Tigers Blood is an early album-of-the-year contender for me. While there aren’t scorching rock songs like on Out in the Storm, her folky take on indie rock delivers some sweet and tender love songs that I’m playing more and more.
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