As anyone in a long-term relationship will tell you, commitment is the key to success.
In sickness and in health, through times good and bad. All those sentiments that have inspired countless treacly love songs stuffed with idyllic and saccharine cliches.
Katie Crutchfield has largely avoided that topic in the music she makes as Waxahatchee.
Until recently, that is.
A stand-out on her new album, Tigers Blood, Right Back To It is a song Crutchfield describes as an ode to the "ebb and flow to a longtime love story". And it never once relies on the songwriting crutch of uttering those three small words.
Instead, she sings about the comfort of having somebody dependable that can centre and steady you when you veer off course.
"You just settle in/like a song with no end", Crutchfield sighs over gently ambling banjo and porch-side rock.
We might fight, get jealous, or worry ourselves into lows but we can always reconnect to the rhythm of that special someone who makes us better versions of ourselves.
Released back in January and heralding the arrival of her sixth album Tigers Blood, Right Back to It is already being widely hailed as one of the year’s best songs.
Crutchfield vividly recalls coming up with the tune while on tour with fellow American singer-songwriters Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell.
"I remember specifically telling [Isbell] the day I wrote 'Right Back To It,” she tells Double J's Tim Shiel.
"I passed him walking and was like, 'I've got a hot hand, Jason. I'm writing some songs'. And he's like, 'Oh, that’s the best feeling'!"
She invokes the idea of being shuffled some luck, but truth is, Waxahatchee's built a winning deck in recent years.
Much of her new record was written while touring Saint Cloud, the breakthrough 2020 album where she steered head-on into rootsy Americana.
Praised as one of the year's best records, it brought her unprecedented levels of attention and popularity, winning new audiences without shedding her stalwart fans.
After joining up with Texan troubadour Jess Williamson for 2022 side project Plains (and their one-off album I Walked With You A Ways), Tigers Blood is the true follow-up to Saint Cloud.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with its predecessor as Waxahatchee's finest work, Tigers Blood is rooted in similar themes and the same American South sound, where country-flavoured twang and magnetic melodies meet.
You get a little boot-scootin', bar-band swagger and mild snarl in Bored; slide guitar and hazy harmonica bring a rustic edge to Burns Out At Midnight, while the closing title track rises from an unhurried strum to a sun-kissed group sing-along.
Where did the name Tigers Blood even come from?
"It's a snow cone flavour: strawberry and coconut mixed together," Crutchfield explains.
It came to her as an interesting way of rendering innocent childhood summers and — just as Saint Cloud was a way of conjuring small-town America — Tigers Blood stuck with her when it came time to title the album.
"It's sort of innocuous… but those words together are evocative. It does sound sort of gritty and muscular almost but it's very innocent."
'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'
That's the attitude Crutchfield took to making the album, returning to the same producer and studio location that spawned Saint Cloud.
Namely, decamping to Sonic Ranch — a sprawling pecan farm near the Texas border — with producer Brad Cook, whose CV includes indie heroes Bon Iver, The War On Drugs and Australia's own Angie McMahon.
"Everything worked so well with Saint Cloud," she remarks.
"[Brad and I thought], 'We're going to have a different group of musicians with us, but everything else we should do the same way. We should do it at the same studio with the same engineer.'"
Crutchfield and Cook assembled a crack, alt-country studio band "in five minutes", featuring Brad's multi-instrumentalist brother Phil Cook, drummer Spencer Tweedy (son of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy) and word-of-mouth rising star MJ Lenderman — a member of indie rock darlings Wednesday and solo artist behind 2022 sleeper hit Boat Songs.
"He’s just so good, I love his music so much," says Crutchfield of Lenderman, who provides tasteful guitar and vocal harmonies on several album tracks, including his star turn duetting in 'Right Back to It'.
"He just quietly steers his own ship," she adds — a neat wink to the image of Lenderman cruising a ferry down the bayou in the song's music video.
"I feel like he's so tuned in with himself. He has a quiet confidence, and he should because he's really, really talented.
"And he's just doing what he's doing for all the right reasons. He has all the integrity in the world."
Settled down and staying sober
Boasting magnetic melodies and warm, sauntering moods, Tigers Blood is the kind of record you can easily throw on for a BBQ gathering, or while relaxing on a Sunday morning. But it also rewards more intimate listening.
Deeper investigation reveals deceptively poignant songs about slowing down, leaving the thrills of youth behind, and settling into life’s middle stretch.
"There ain’t nothing to it, babe", goes the caution-to-the-wind refrain of Evil Spawn; "We can roll around in the disarray/In the final act of the good old days".
Now 35 years old and settled down with her partner (musician and occasional collaborator Kevin Morby) Crutchfield sounds more comfortable in her own skin than ever.
On paper, the idea of songs that embrace domesticity and stability sound boring.
In practice, Crutchfield's music and lyrics are far more satisfyingly complex, in a wholesome 'chicken soup for the soul' kind of way.
Sure, anxiety and uncertainties don't just magically disappear with age, but wisdom means we’re better equipped to grapple with what might weigh us down.
"My life's been mapped out to a tee/But I’m always a little lost" she confesses on the soaring, yearning Lone Star Lake before extending an appealing invitation and another beautiful chorus:
"Whaddya say? You sleep all-day/ We drive out to the only lake in Kansas".
The sense of there being something more serious beneath its sweet exterior shines on the song 365.
Crutchfield harmonises with herself on a pop radio-friendly top-line melody, but delivers it in a gorgeously stripped back arrangement while sketching a moving tale of moving on from a co-dependent relationship with an addict.
Keeping peace in a restless world and seeking value in embracing stability sometimes means cutting toxic elements out of your life.
In Crutchfield's case, that meant cutting drink and drugs from her life. While Saint Cloud first telegraphed that decision, Tigers Blood examines what it's like maintaining that sobriety.
In promoting the album, she's already spoken about wanting to dismantle the stereotype of the tortured artist, and that attitude has extended to her touring lifestyle.
"Not to brag but I feel like, since I got sober, I'm a good tone setter on tour," she chuckles.
"I have really healthy habits: working out, getting up early, going to bed early, I'm hydrating, I'm bringing all my wellness supplements for everyone to use."
She adds: "It's not a party tour. We have a tonne of fun but there's not drinking and drugs around. I try and do my thing and hope it rubs off on everybody and it always does. It's great."
In it for the long haul
Born in Alabama and now based in Kansas City, Crutchfield has been playing music since her early teens.
Between high school breaks, she and her twin sister, Allison, would head out on self-founded tours.
They'd resist their country-music-loving upbringing both sonically and geographically, playing DIY emo and pop-punk in bands like PS Eliot and Bad Banana, building a cult following that'd take Katie from her hometown of Birmingham to Philadelphia and, later, Brooklyn and Long Island as she went solo as Waxahatchee.
Saint Cloud marked a return to the Alabaman roots and Southern accent she'd neglected, and Tigers Blood further embraces that love of porch-side Americana.
There's a current trend of music's biggest names "going country" — from Beyoncé to Lana Del Rey and Post Malone — in a bid to branch out and capitalise on the genre's ever-burgeoning US market.
Having pivoted somewhat in that direction herself, Waxahatchee recognises the creative impulse.
"I think it's very contemporary to reinvent yourself. It calls your name, especially as your profile grows. I think often you don’t know what to do but pivot."
There was discussion of shifting gears again for Tigers Blood but "Brad and I were coming up blank with how we should proceed." Ultimately, she turned to her "biggest heroes" for guidance.
"Tom Petty and Lucinda Williams: they never really reinvented themselves, they just focused on writing really great songs and did what they could to elevate them. But they didn't change up the sound that much.
"I don’t know what I'll do in the future but I'm in this era where I don't think I'm going to be focusing too much on reinventing, genre-wise.
"Im not going to put too much emphasis on aesthetics."
The music industry loves a gimmick — something that cuts through the noise and short memory, social media-fication of art. But that's not a game Crutchfield is comfortable playing.
Tigers Blood is her sixth album in 12 years as Waxahatchee, and as she's always done, she's focusing on her life being the fuel for her craft. And she's planning to have plenty in the tank for decades to come.
"It's just about writing great songs and just putting great musicians in the room together to make the best records we can."
Tigers Blood, this week’s Double J Feature Album, is out now.
Hear Tim Shiel speak with Katie Crutchfield on Arvos on Double J from 3pm Tuesday.