Waxahatchee: Saint Cloud [MERGE]

Why you'll love it

This Merge edition comes with a custom inner sleeve, a 24" x 36" foldout poster and a download card. Saint Cloud won universal acclaim and turned up on year-end lists everywhere.

This edition

• Custom inner sleeve
• 24" x 36" foldout poster
• Download card included
• Pressed in Canada

About the album

After years of loud guitars, Katie Crutchfield got sober, slowed down and found her voice somewhere between Alabama and the open road. She wrote most of Saint Cloud at home in Kansas City, took her time with it, and recorded it with producer Brad Cook at Sonic Ranch in Texas and Long Pond in upstate New York, with Michigan band Bonny Doon backing her up. Once the inspiration came, she said, the songs arrived quickly.

Lucinda Williams is the guiding star here, and the songs have that same plain-spoken grace. "Oxbow" opens the album on a clean slate, "Fire" is a love song she wrote to herself, "Lilacs" is about the work of looking after yourself, and "The Eye" took loose inspiration from Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song." The closing title track is named for her father's hometown of St. Cloud, Florida.

It arrived just as the world went into lockdown, and plenty of listeners found it a comforting companion through the long months that followed. Merge had it pressed in Canada, which we choose to read as the record wanting to be closer to us.

Also at Kops: more Waxahatchee on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Merge (cat# MRG704), the 2020 album.