Right Back To It — Waxahatchee
#365Songs: January 25th
Waxahatchee’s new single was released on January 9th. According to Spotify, the song has 884,463 listens — of which I account for 883,028 of them, and that means she’s made roughly $.03 off of my obsession. (I’ll make it up to her when I purchase the vinyl when it’s released on March 22nd, I promise.)
As a discoverer, I listen to a lot of new music each year. January’s always good for a few deep cuts, but rarely a song this good. And I’m serious when I say it’s that good. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Katie Crutchfield pulls deep Southern roots through her music — tones of bluegrass, folk-country, a whole lot of Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch, and a healthy passion for the Velvet Underground. She’s rarely missed over her career, but there’s something different about this track.
Photograph of us
In a spotlight
On a hot night
I was drifting in and out
Reticent on the off chance
I’m blunter than a bullseye
Begging for peace of mind
I get ahead of myself
Bracing for a bombshell
Your love written on a blank check
Wear it around your neck
I was at a loss
But you come to me on a fault line
Deep inside a goldmine
Hovering like a moth
The most artful country lyricists introspect, reflect, cast broken characters wandering confused through lonely landscapes in search of past selves, lost friends. They mourn old loves, drive dark highways with no discernible destinations. Just as with Gillian’s finest songs — I Dream a Highway, Revelator, Look at Miss Ohio — Waxahatchee draws us into this literary dimension and dazes us with her poetry.
If I swerve in and out of my lane
Burning up an old flame
Turn a jealous eye
I’ll fall down into a fair game
Lick a wound that was not
Ever mine
I get ahead of myself
Refusing anyone’s help
I find myself drifting off and losing time when hearing a song like Right Back To It. MJ Lenderman contributes guitar and harmonized vocals as added fuel to the atmosphere, layering the world of the song. I feel this urge to brush aside all else and write, craft my own characters lost in their own broken worlds.
A few years ago, I fell into the Gillian Welch rabbit hole and listened to I Dream a Highway for about 30 straight hours. The song’s sprawl and structure disrupts its own repetition with strikingly complex prose, a 14 ½ minute track that is a road trip in and of itself. Right Back To It takes me back to that place, sending my finger to the replay button over and over.
I let my mind run wild
Don’t know why I do it
But you just settle in
Like a song with no end
If I can keep up
We’ll get right back to it
We’ll get right back to it
We’ll get right back to it
