MERGE
On her fifth album Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield is freshly sober and searching for perspective. For a long time, the songwriter has found a way of neatly marrying singer-songwriter tropes with an indie/alt-rock grit, but here she seems more comfortable leaning towards the former as she opens herself up for inspection. The album is peppered heavily with country tendencies, both classic and rootsy and contemporary and shiny; the result is her most realised, striking songwriting to date. Her voice seems to slide and glide more freely with this kind of musical backing, the loose unravelling guitar lines and sparse tip-tap drums providing the required room for her to float throughout the record. Transitioning into a kind of Americana pop is something Crutchfield makes seem like the most natural thing in the world.