Cerulean Salt retains Cructchfield’s outstanding songwriting voice (pushes it further even) while giving the record a sonic immediacy that its predecessor lacked.
It’s that blazingly honest, hyper-personal quality that places Cerulean Salt in the tradition of Elliott Smith, early Cat Power, or Liz Phair's free-flowing Girlysound tapes-- the work of a songwriter skilled enough to make introspection seem not self-centered, but generous.
Crutchfield isn’t necessarily aiming to delineate any universal truths about love or loss, but what makes Cerulean Salt so enjoyable and so endlessly relistenable is that some of her snapshots likely resemble ones from your own lost photo albums.
It’s always been clear that Katie Crutchfield was a talented songwriter, but ‘Cerulean Salt’ represents an outstanding example of that talent blossoming into one of US indie’s most vital and compelling voices.
By being unrelenting with her angst, Crutchfield continues to make herself a most alluring figure.
The recordings are dry and vérité, which they have to be to help Crutchfield make her point: Namely, that these are honest songs about real people being hammered out in the basements and garages of unromantic places.
... she’s still brutally picking at old scabs to expose the muck festering underneath. The truth has seldom sounded so good.
Waxahatchee’s second album is one to immerse yourself in, to lose yourself in and generally marvel at the raw emotion that’s so beautifully expressed.
Crutchfield’s inexhaustible desire to make short, emotional rock records at an impressive clip and get every overshare on is a rare thing in tuneful bandleaders these days.
Cerulean Salt is proof positive that Katie Crutchfield is well on her way to becoming all she can be, an emerging artist who definitely possesses the skills and a point-of-view that you’ve either got or don’t.
While its author lives and dies on our empathy, she’s precise and engaging enough to most often get it.
Katie Crutchfield called her friends Swearin' to her house, went down to the basement and made an amount of cerulean salt, whithout explaining its use, allowing, in that way, to each potential attender to draw his own conclusion.
cerulean salt is a comfort sulk while lying on a mattress on the floor of a sparse room still in your towel after a cold afternoon shower in the middle of summer (lol might just be me)
one of the few albums I fell in love with out of habit - bought it on sale, left it in the record player, kept pressing play, and now it's my go-to when I need to be with myself - it has so easily become a part of my narrative
Hollow Bedroom ~ ★★★☆☆
Dixie Cups & Jars ~ ★★★☆☆
Lips and Limbs ~ ★★★☆☆
Blue Pt. II ~ ★★★☆☆
Brother Bryan ~ ★★★★★
Coast to Coast ~ ★★★★★
Tangled Envisioning ~ ★★★★☆
Misery over Dispute ~ ★★★★☆
Lively ~ ★★★★☆
Waiting ~ ★★★★☆
Swan Dive ~ ★★★★☆
Peace and Quiet ~ ★★★★☆
You’re Damaged ~ ★★★★☆
⏳ new & improved: time-weighted score ⏳
What do you hear when you listen to this? Because I don't hear a lot.
I was a teenager when I stumbled upon 90s lo-fi rock bands on the internet. That stuff changed my life. Now anything that's remotely touching it gets critical acclaim? Maybe some of y'all vibe with these lyrics. But as for the world of lo-fi, this is "remotely touching" it.
1 | Hollow Bedroom 1:51 | 89 |
2 | Dixie Cups & Jars 3:36 | 87 |
3 | Lips and Limbs 2:38 | 87 |
4 | Blue Pt. II 2:19 | 86 |
5 | Brother Bryan 2:37 | 86 |
6 | Coast to Coast 1:46 | 89 |
7 | Tangled Envisioning 2:27 | 86 |
8 | Misery Over Dispute 1:46 | 85 |
9 | Lively 2:32 | 86 |
10 | Waiting 1:41 | 86 |
11 | Swan Dive 3:15 | 94 |
12 | Peace and Quiet 2:38 | 90 |
13 | You’re Damaged 3:34 | 90 |
#7 | / | A.V. Club |
#16 | / | Stereogum |
#17 | / | NME |
#18 | / | Listen Before You Buy |
#18 | / | The Line of Best Fit |
#19 | / | Paste |
#19 | / | Red Bull |
#20 | / | Spin |
#22 | / | Cokemachineglow |
#22 | / | Pitchfork |