Waxahatchee — Exclaim!’s March 2024 cover star — is back today with another preview of her forthcoming sixth album, Tigers Blood.
Arriving alongside a video shot at the Devil’s Backbone Tavern in Fischer, TX, “Bored” follows the record’s lead single, the MJ Lenderman-featuring “Right Back to It.” Our second taste of Tigers Blood finds the artist born Katie Crutchfield smoothly sliding into a different vein from the last track’s Sunday morning-ease for something with a little more bite.
“I feel like my comfort zone when writing songs lies somewhere on the emotional spectrum of sadness and heartache. Writing from a place of happiness scares me. Too earnest. Anger scares me even more,” the singer-songwriter explained in a statement. “I wrote ‘Bored’ about one of those situations where anger was called for and was the only authentic place from which to write about what I was experiencing. It was a challenge for me and ‘Bored’ is the end result.”
“A shade that suits me / It’s not natural beauty / The line of duty / Collapses into me,” Crutchfield sings, her signature vocal fry suiting a huffy retort as easily as it does the well-worn tenderness of “Right Back to It,” frustrated with feeling like she's losing herself in the (stereotypically feminized) caretaker role she has to play in a relationship.
Watch the Corbett Jones and Nick Simonite-directed video, which features some amazing snarls and stank-face from Crutchfield, below.