Pitchfork评测Waxahatchee最佳新专辑Saint Cloud

With a shift in tone and tempo, Katie Crutchfield creates a vivid modern classic of folk and Americana. It’s the sound of a cherished songwriter thawing out under the sun.

随着音调和节奏的变化，凯蒂·克拉奇菲尔德创造了一个生动经典的民谣和美式乡村。这是一位备受怀念过去的唱作人在阳光下融化的声音。

With Katie Crutchfield’s fifth solo album comes the spring, its essence bottled so powerfully you could name a perfume after it: Saint Cloud, by Waxahatchee. Its sensory trigger has the power to replace the memory of whatever you call this atrophic season happening around us. Instead, Saint Cloud is all lilacs and creek beds, Memphis skylines and Manhattan subways, love and sobriety, the sound of a cherished songwriter thawing out under the sun.

This transformative effect was absent on Crutchfield’s previous solo work. Don’t take that as a knock on her intimate, lo-fi 2012 debut American Weekend or 2013’s remarkable follow-up Cerulean Salt, whose songs of love and harm still land like a hundred little knicks to the flesh. Even as Crutchfield revved up the sound and the stakes on 2017’s searing Out in the Storm, finding darkness deep within her psyche, her songwriting remained bound up in grungy distortion, spare arrangements, and blocky rhythms. Three chords and the truth was always her credo, but Crutchfield needed more room for that credo to thrive.

随着凯蒂·克拉奇菲尔德(Katie Crutchfield)的第五张个人专辑在春天的到来，它的精华被瓶装得如此强烈，以至于你可以用它来命名一种香水:Waxahatchee的Saint Cloud。它的感官发射器有能力取代我们周围发生的任何你称之为萎靡不振的季节的记忆。相反，圣克劳德是紫丁香和小溪的床，孟菲斯的天际线和曼哈顿的地铁，爱和冷静，一个受人喜爱的唱作人在阳光下融化的声音。

这种变革性的效果在克拉奇菲尔德之前的个人作品中是不存在的。不要认为这是对她2012年首张私人和lofi录制效果的《美国周末》(American Weekend)或2013年引人注目的后续专辑《天蓝色盐》(Cerulean Salt)的抨击，后者阐述关于爱与伤害之歌仍然像100个小尼克斯一样冲击着肉体。尽管克拉奇菲尔德在2017年的《在风暴中燃烧》（Out in the storm）中加大了声音探索的冒险，发现了内心深处的黑暗，但她的歌曲创作仍然束缚在肮脏的失真，简单的编曲和短而结实的节奏中。三和弦和真相一直是她的信条，但克拉奇菲尔德需要更多的空间来实现这一信条。

And so Crutchfield decided to build songs that she could stroll right into. Twirl, even. She resides inside a world that drapes over her like the sky-blue dress she wears on the album’s cover. If that sleeved dress and the old pickup truck didn’t clue you in, Saint Cloud is an album in the thrall of Americana and the country music of her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama: Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, George Jones. Produced with a warm and deft touch by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger), the album never chugs or lurches into a rock groove. It’s made of simple blues patterns, nothing-fancy chords, and the steady backbeat of a band working only for the song. Every note rings and chimes: a light organ here, the slight twang of a Telecaster there, gently plucked leads on an acoustic back there, all perfectly appointed for Crutchfield’s songwriting. It feels like you’re in possession of a family heirloom.

That ease comes in part because this is the first album Crutchfield wrote after getting sober in 2018. On the outstanding “Fire,” she sings that she’s “wiser, slower, and attuned,” words that also serve as the mood throughout Saint Cloud. Her lyrics wind around and corkscrew a bit more on this record than previous ones, but it’s a feat that Crutchfield pulls off with a daredevil command of verse. “Fire” rings of desperation and conquest, a promise to make oneself meek, small as a bird, even turn into liquid, just to live inside someone: “And when I turn back around/Will you drain me back out/Will you let me believe that I broke through?” Crutchfield told Rolling Stone that she had difficulty writing while sober, but these are some of the most careful and evocative lyrics she’s ever composed.

因此，克拉奇菲尔德决定创作一些她可以漫步其中的歌曲，甚至能身处其中轻快的旋转。她生活在一个像她在专辑封面上穿的天蓝色裙子一样笼罩着她的世界里。如果那件袖裙和那辆旧皮卡还没让你明白，那么“圣云”（Saint Cloud）是一张深受美国文化和她在阿拉巴马州伯明翰度过的童年乡村音乐的影响的专辑:洛丽塔·林恩、塔米·怀内特、乔治·琼斯。这张专辑由Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger)以温暖而灵巧的手法制作，从未有摇滚不定的节奏。它是由简单的蓝调，平淡无奇的和弦和乐队只为歌曲而演奏的稳定的逆拍组成的。每一个音符都响起了钟声:这里是轻快的管风琴，那里是电视广播机的轻微的鼻音，那里是声学上轻轻拨动的引线，所有这些都完美地为克拉奇菲尔德的歌曲创作而指明方向。感觉就像你拥有了一件传家宝。

专辑中轻块放松部分是因为克拉奇菲尔德在2018年戒酒后写的第一张专辑。在那首出色的《火》(Fire)中，她唱到自己“更聪明，更慢，更和善”，这些词也贯穿了整首《圣克劳德》。她的歌词在这张唱片中比之前的专辑更加迂回曲折，但这是一个壮举，克拉奇菲尔德用一种大胆的诗句来呈现。“火”是绝望和征服的声音，是一个承诺，让自己变得温顺，小得像只鸟，甚至变成液体，只是为了住在某人的体内:“当我转身的时候/你会把我吸干吗/你会让我相信我已经突破了吗?”克拉奇菲尔德告诉《滚石》杂志，她在清醒的时候很难写作，但这些是她创作过的最细腻，最令人回味的歌词。

There’s a subtle difference between writing that digs and writing that discovers. If her older records did the former—peeling back layers of innocence and isolation to get to the nerve-endings—Crutchfield is now a discoverer who sees the world anew. Much of Saint Cloud is wide-eyed and detailed; she sings as if amazed at what she feels. “The Eye” is all about being levitated in those dizzy moments of love. Crutchfield lets the lyrics tumble out of her in a litany, absolutely goofy that her partner will give her something “to think and sing and follow.” The song peaks as Crutchfield builds vocal harmonies that gather behind this image: “A scientific cryptogram lit up behind a jet stream,” and for just a second, as if to highlight the ear-to-ear grin behind the song, a bluegrass chorus of Crutchfields all pile into the words “lit up.”

Because Saint Cloud is so fresh and budding on the outside, Crutchfield can hide her anger and fear inside it. This new contrast gives great dimension to her storytelling, allowing all the sourness and rot at the fringes of her songs to come and go at will. “War” takes on a rambling ’60s Dylan feel, that lets her talk about how she’s prone to “come in hot” and “fill up the room,” but she’s quick to add—as we all do in heated moments—that it has “nothing to do with you.” The trauma buried at the heart of “Arkadelphia” is so palpable that the slow-burn tempo makes it glow white. She sings softly, “If we make pleasant conversation/I hope you can’t see what’s burning in me.” Crutchfield is still the patron saint of emotional chaos, but her songs suggest that she’s becoming more of a protector, a homebody, looking to take everything out of storage and either throw it away or keep it safe in a home.

The climax of the record, “Ruby Falls,” is where all of the ambition and aesthetics come together. As she walks down 7th Street in Manhattan, Crutchfield’s wisdom collects into buckets: “Real love don’t follow a straight line/It breaks your neck, it builds you a delicate shrine,” and, “You might mourn all that you wasted/That’s just part of the haul.” Her pen moves ornately across the page, the aperture of her songwriting flies open. The unsparing indie style of Chan Marshall or Liz Phair remains, but 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. It’s a record that suggests maybe if you slow down, life slows down with you, and everything is in bloom.

挖掘式写作和发现式写作之间有微妙的区别。如果说克拉奇菲尔德以前的唱片起到了前者的作用——揭开了一层纯真和孤立的面纱，到达了神经末梢——那么她现在是一个以全新的眼光看待世界的发现者。圣克劳德的大部分作品都是睁大眼睛的看世界，细节丰富;她唱着歌，似乎对自己的感受感到惊讶。“The Eye”是关于在那些令人眩晕的记忆和爱中漂浮。克拉奇菲尔德让歌词在她的连篇中蹦出来，绝对愚蠢，她的伴侣会给她一些“思考，唱歌和跟随”的东西。这首歌在克拉奇菲尔德构建和声时达到了顶峰，这些和声聚集在这张图片后面:“一个科学密码在急流后面被照亮了”，就在那一秒钟，似乎是为了突出歌曲背后的合耳大笑，克拉奇菲尔德的蓝草音乐合唱都堆在了“被照亮了”这个词上。

因为“Saint Cloud”在外表是如此的新颖和成长性，克拉奇菲尔德可以隐藏她的愤怒和恐惧。这种新的对比为她的故事叙述提供了广阔的维度，让她歌曲边缘的所有性情怪癖和憔悴都可以随意地来来去去。《战争》带着迪伦漫无目的的60年代感觉，这让她谈起了自己是如何容易“热情洋溢”和“占据整个房间”，但她很快补充道——就像我们在热情洋溢的时刻所做的那样——这“与你无关”。埋藏在《阿卡德尔菲亚》创伤的核心是如此明显，以至于缓慢燃烧的节奏使它焕发出耀眼的光。她温柔地唱道:“如果我们愉快地交谈/我希望你看不到我内心燃烧的火焰。”克拉奇菲尔德仍然是情感混乱的守护神，但她的歌曲表明，她正变得更像一个保护者，一个居家者，希望把所有东西从储藏室里拿出来，要么扔掉，要么安全地放在家里。

唱片的高潮“红宝石瀑布”（Ruby Falls）是所有野心和美学的结合。当克拉奇菲尔德走在曼哈顿的第七街时，她的智慧被收集起来:“真爱不会走一条直线/它会折断你的脖子，它会为你建造一座精致的神坛，”还有，“你可能会哀悼你浪费的一切/那只是一部分。”她的笔在书页上华丽地移动，她的歌曲创作的放开。Chan Marshall或Liz Phair特立独立风格依然存在，但Saint Cloud的影响力要大得多。它不仅与露辛达·威廉姆斯(Lucinda Williams) 1998年的专辑《砂砾路上的车轮》(Car Wheels on a Gravel Road)相呼应，还在它旁边停了下来，这是一部生动的民谣和美国风格的现代经典。这张唱片表明，如果你慢下来，生活也会跟着慢下来，一切都会开花结果。