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.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.
Crutchfield vividly recalls coming up with the tune while on tour with fellow American singer-songwriters Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell. Much of her new record was written while touring Saint Cloud, the breakthrough 2020 album where she steered head-on into rootsy Americana.After joining up with Texan troubadour Jess Williamson for 2022 side project Plains , Tigers Blood is the true follow-up to Saint Cloud.
"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."That's the attitude Crutchfield took to making the album, returning to the same producer and studio location that spawned Saint Cloud. "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.
"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".On paper, the idea of songs that embrace domesticity and stability sound boring. 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.
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."Born in Alabama and now based in Kansas City, Crutchfield has been playing music since her early teens.