What Means the World to You: 2015 in Musical Memories
April: Waxahatchee — Ivy Tripp
After catching not one, but three impressive sets from Waxahatchee a few weeks prior at SXSW, I had Ivy Tripp on slow and steady repeat for most of April. I remember so vividly when I heard Katie Crutchfield’s first album American Weekend, after reading Lindsay Zoladz write about it for Slate’s Music Club back in 2012. This was exactly the kind of music I wanted to hear, and have always been drawn to: Lo-fi folk that borders on completely acoustic, with a female voice singing about all the deepness of hearts and time and ennui. One day, I vowed I would write about Waxahatchee too, for an important site. Flash forward to 2015 and I’m working for one the sites I would’ve dreamed unimaginable back then, and there’s a new record from Crutchfield on the way. This one though, is much different from American Weekend; it felt like hearing all the grunge and fuzz of late ’90s stuff that peppered my teenage years growing up in the outskirts of Portland filtered back through Crutchfield’s intimate lyrics, all topped off with a sweet abandon. I used this album when I needed to float, needed to believe that where I was in my life in the present was better than the dreamer from three years ago. I used “Under A Rock” to remind myself that letting someone you loved become “someone else’s mess” is its own form of love. I used Ivy Tripp to remind myself that I was worth all of my own focused attention, traveling the world, ivy tripping all alone.—Caitlin White