Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee, has always slipped through my fingers. Listening to her albums (mainly 2015’s Ivy Tripp and 2017’s Out In The Storm) is like having a conversation with someone interesting about a subject you barely know of, and despite how much attention you pay to the other person you don’t remember anyhting about it the day after.

I found that particularly annoying specially because of how good songwriter Crutchfield is. Her songs range from ethereal indie-rock anthems to energetic southern-drenched odes to youth and how the world isn’t actually waiting for us to catch up. The situation changed with Saint Cloud. Starting with its three excellent preceding singles, which actually got me excited for this album more than any other release in the first quarter of the year, the record is Waxahatchee’s most immediate.

The lyrics on Waxahatchee’s fifth album find her dealing with growth. Not in the simplistic way that’s usually embedded in capital-p personal music, but a detailed discovery of why you needed to grow out of whatever haunted you in the past. ‘Fire’, the first single off the album, is an example of this. A song Crutchfield described as ‘a personal pep talk’. ‘And when I turn back around/Will you drain me back out’ she sings over a steady rhythm section and gentle guitars, ‘Will you let me believe that I broke through?’ she calmly asks herself. Because the record’s questioning is born in Crutchfield’s own life and the only person with the answers is herself.

The music in the album ranges from the mid-tempo Americana and country-influenced ‘Can’t Do Much’ to the indie-folk of ‘Arkadelphia’. These sounds let Waxahatchee soar through these tracks, enabling her songwriting to tower above it all. And more notably, her voice is nuanced and vivacious. Sounding less restrained than ever, she gives every word its own time, mixing them swiftly or letting them elongate as long as she pleases. Moreover, the sounds that are peppered throughout, help the record feel markedly candid. An electric guitar here and there, the gentle drumming, some strings, the vocal harmonies; these are all elements in a chemical formula that succeeds at every turn.

Katie Crutchfield got sober between Saint Cloud and its predecessor. And although I can’t undoubtedly state that the album sounds more clear-headed, is hard to ignore that all of the tracks here are written from an unfettered point of view. On past releases, she never let substances cloud her vision but the path that she treads in this album seems only possible in this new circumstance. One that also (I just wanted to mention it but maybe has also a slight influence) includes her relationship with indie-folk troubadour Kevin Morby, an excellent musician, whose career its pretty much parallel to Waxahatchee’s.

Its ultimately the songs that take Saint Cloud to the top of Waxahatchee’s records. Yes, I mean that. This collection of tracks is superb and showcase a songwriter widening her view as far as she probably always wanted, but just now figured out how. ‘Look back at me, embers aglow’ she recitates in the coda of the beautiful closer ‘St. Cloud’, (a point in the record I realized it never let me go) making sure that I don’t forget it the next morning, or the whole year for that matter.