Waxahatchee

American Weekend Waxahatchee Red Vinyl edition

Red vinyl reissue of Waxahatchee's 2012 debut studio album.

A collection of minimal acoustic-guitar pop about relationships and transience, written and recorded in a week at Katie’s family’s Alabama home. “I don’t care if I’m too young to be unhappy,” she sings on “Grass Stain.” That lyric sort of sums up this entire album. It’s the kind of record you want to simultaneously keep all to yourself and share with everyone you’ve ever met.

Katie Crutchfield, under the name Waxahatchee, made her debut album during a snowstorm in the winter of 2012. She dedicated it “to anyone who had woke up and realized their identity is blurry, has had to clumsily get to know themselves, has hit a bottom, has felt self-deprecating and vagrant, and to anyone who has ridden out a shitstorm.”

She called it American Weekend. She means “American Weekend” in the same wide way that Kurt Cobain means “Teen Spirit,” less social construct than natural phenomenon. This is a lo-fi masterpiece in the league of Lou Barlow and the Softies. We should consider it a descendent of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, or else temper it no lower than Essential Listening.