Waxahatchee: “I wanted the opportunity to take as long as we needed”

In the new, April 2015 issue of DIY, Katie Crutchfield aka Waxahatchee admits that she still draws from “depression and sadness” when it comes to songwriting.

“That sounds the most like me,” she tells Ali Shutler, speaking about forthcoming album ‘Ivy Tripp’. “ “I like the juxtaposition, have the lyrics heavy, but have the music fun. It evokes a weird, emotional combination that I enjoy.”

The album takes its title for a term Crutchfield “made up”, she explains. “It’s about the general directionless of life, especially for people in their twenties, thirties and beyond. It’s an evolving idea that I have.

“A lot of my closest friends are in the same boat as me, where all their weird friends from high school are getting married,” she continues. “We all lament that together, but who knows if they’re even happy? It’s an observation of that. It’s resisting that weird conformity and realising that everyone’s kinda unhappy but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. That sounds like a weird and existential idea but as long as you try and make yourself happy, that’s all that really matters.”

Recorded at home, away from the “clinical” feel of a studio and the constraints of working to a deadline, “I wanted the opportunity to take as long as we needed,” ‘Ivy Tripp’ came together one song at a time. “Every day we’d sit with one song and see what it needed. We’d toss ideas around and add things,” remembers Katie. Then, at the end of the day, Kyle Gilbride, who engineered the record and plays alongside Allison in Swearin’, Keith, also from Swearin’, and Katie would relax and take in what they had created until “by the end we just knew. We knew it was in a good place.”