Out in the Storm

"I spend all my time learning how to defeat you at your own game. It's embarrassing." So opens the fourth LP from singer-guitarist Katie Crutchfield's great indie-rock band Waxahatchee: two clear sentences mapping out an album's worth of tangled regret, helplessness, endurance and shame – driven home with burning guitars and ache and hunger in her voice. It starts off the sharpest set of songs Crutchfield has come up with, from the big-drinking, scene-causing country of "8 Ball" to the Nineties guitar churn of "Silver" to the ruggedly pretty ballad "Sparks Fly." Each song is as grueling as it is thrilling.