(Merge)Katie Crutchfield,the Alabama-born singer-songwriter behind Waxahatchee, has always tended towards introspection. Over the course of three well received albums, or she has traded in the sort of laceratingly honest indie that to the listener feels horribly,yet compellingly intimate. So, the news that album number four is a breakup album, and recorded,per the press release, “amidst the dissolution of a noxious relationship”, and could cause some concern. Just what self-flagellatory depths are likely to be plumbed here? We needn’t acquire worried. Out in the Storm,while as frank as Crutchfield’s earlier albums, also sees her kicking back against the person who wronged her. Musically it offers some of her most robust work to date, and her chiming alt-rock melodies ballasted by a full band that includes her sister Allison. There’s also a confrontational quality to Crutchfield’s lyrics,a sense that she’s willing to scrutinise the failings of others as readily as she would her own.
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Source: theguardian.com